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MEMOIR 



JOHN C. LORD, D. D 



PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
FOR THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. 



Compiled by Order of the Church Session. 



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BUFFALO : 
THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS. 



1878. 



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RESOLUTIONS BY THE CHURCH. 



The Rev. Dr. Lord, the founder of this Church, and its 
honored Pastor for more than a generation, has passed from earth 
to the better world. 

Although, at his venerable age and in his frail condition of 
health, this event was not wholly unexpected ; although the worn- 
out soldier of the Cross, for some weeks had been longing for the 
summons to lay down his weapons and armor, and be at rest, — yet 
the shock of our bereavement seemed sudden, and our hearts and 
tongues are still stricken with the " dull paralysis of woe." 

Society at large mourns the loss of a great and good man of 
singularly sturdy and massive character. We, his old parishioners, 
lament an affectionate, sympathizing friend ; a wise counselor ; 
a loving, faithful shepherd, endowed with those rare, magnetic 
qualities that irresistibly knit our affections to his, our gifted, 
great-hearted Pastor ; our beloved and revered Father in Israel. 

All his blessed ministrations ; all our sweet communions with 
him, are now but a beautiful memory,— yet a memory which is im- 
perishable, and, we trust, will be fruitful for good evermore. 

God grant us all a re-union with our dear and sainted Pastor in 
the land where there shall be no partings ; no sundering of sacred 
ties, and where the Infinite Father shall wipe away the tears from 
every eye. 

Resolved, That the foregoing tribute be transmitted to the 
widow and family of the deceased, with assurances of our most 
respectful and affectionate sympathy, and that a copy be entered 
on the minutes of the Clerk. 



RESOLUTIONS BY THE COMMON COUNCIL. 



Whereas, The Rev. John C. Lord has been called from his 
earthly career to his heavenly abode and reward, therefore, 

Resolved, That the death of Dr. Lord removes from among us 
one of the most devout Christian ministers and eminent divines 
of the country. 

Resolved, That his long, useful and faithful service as Pastor of 
one of the oldest and largest Churches of the city, his distinguished 
and unquestioned abilities, his many Christian virtues and his 
unselfish devotion to the best interests of the community in which 
he lived, for more than half a century, make his loss one that will 
be sensibly realized by a large circle of mourning friends. 

Resolved, That the Council extend its sympathy to the family 
and friends of the deceased, in this their irreparable loss. 

Resolved, That the Council will attend the funeral of the 
deceased, as the last fitting tribute it can pay to the memory of the 
revered dead, before his remains are committed to their mother 
earth. 

Resolved, That these resolutions be spread upon the minutes of 
the Council and a copy thereof given to the family of the 

deceased. 

Attest : F. F. FARGO, 

City Clerk. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

I. Biographical Sketch, 5 

II. Funeral Services, 44 

III. Memorial Sermon, 62 

IV. Memorial Paper, 87 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



BY REV. CHAS. WOOD. 



There is a letter, still carefully preserved, 
written from Washington, N. H., on September 
6th, 1805. In it the Rev. John Lord announces 
the birth of a son on the morning of the 9th 
of August. To the father's name was added 
that of the mother's family, and the child was 
called John Chase Lord. When he was five 
years of age his father removed to Burlington, 
in Otsego county, of this State. There he 
attended the common school, from which, at 
the age of twelve, he entered the Union Acad- 
emy of Plainfield, N. H., which was founded by 
his uncle, the Hon. Daniel Kimball. 

One or two essays, and a few poems in an old 
scrap-book, are the only relics of this early period 
of his life. They are by no means phenomenal. 
They are just such essays, and poems, as many 
a boy of the same age, now studying in some 
high school or academy, will write this year, 



6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



and neither the writings, nor the writer, will the 
world ever hear of. We have no record of 
what books he read, or of what books he refused 
to read. He was not a John Stuart Mill, criti- 
cising in his teens, verbal errors in the accepted 
text of Sophocles, or Euripides ; neither was he 
a Francis Bacon, elaborating a system of phi- 
losophy to supersede Aristotle's, before his face 
showed signs of a beard. He was a thorough- 
going boy, and loved just such books as ordinary 
boys love. At this school he remained for three 
years. But there are no absolute standards of 
time : the boy of thirteen, receives more im- 
pressions in one year, than the man of forty, in 
ten ; and these few years spent in New England, 
breathing an atmosphere which, theologically 
and politically, is unique, gave a coloring to his 
thought, which never wholly faded away. 

From New Hampshire, he went to Madison 
Academy — afterward Madison College. But he 
always spoke of his collegiate course, as having 
begun in 1822, when at the age of seventeen, he 
entered Hamilton, at Clinton, N. Y. 

In the two years which he spent there, his 
intellectual development was rapid. His literary 
efforts began to give promise of unusual intellec- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



7 



tual power. His poetry, too — for such it might 
now be called — evidenced a nature, open on the 
emotional, as well as the intellectual side. He 
was fond of reading, but preferred to read rather 
outside, than within the ordinary curriculum, and 
as the necessary result, he never took the rank in 
his class, to which his abilities entitled him. He 
cared nothing for the athletic sports which were 
then working their way toward the popularity in 
which they are now so strongly intrenched. Like 
Kingsley at Oxford, and Sumner at . Harvard, he 
left behind him no legends of marvellous muscular 
feats. It may be doubted, if he ever handled a 
bat, or vaulted a bar, or shot a gun. 

He was not at this time a Christian. Like 
Augustine in the years when he studied at 
Carthage, he gave promise rather of an enemy, 
than a friend of Jesus of Nazareth. He was 
never dissolute, but during his collegiate course, 
and for some years after, he was thoroughly indif- 
ferent, and did whatever his tastes led him to 
believe would be pleasurable. He staid but two 
years at Hamilton ; when becoming somewhat 
tired of the routine of college life, and longing for 
a field where he could at once make use of the 
powers of which he was becoming conscious, he 



8 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



left very suddenly, with a classmate, and went 
to Canada. There he undertook an enterprise, 
which at that time, was thoroughly characteris- 
tic. He became editor-in-chief of a newspaper, 
which was sent out through the Provinces with 
the irresistible name of " The Canadian." No 
copy of that sheet can now be found ; but we 
are safe in believing, that however uninteresting 
may have been its news department, its edito- 
rials at least, would be read. With much that 
was crude, there must have been a ring, and snap 
to the rhetoric, that would catch the eye, and 
arrest the attention, even of a political opponent. 

Why he became satisfied with a single year's 
experience as an editor, is uncertain. He may 
have found that in his undeveloped mental 
condition, the draft upon his energies was 
too great ; or, which is perhaps more prob- 
able, "The Canadian" brought silver so slowly 
into the pockets of its young editors, that a 
change was felt to be a necessity. This latter 
supposition is borne out by a fact which he 
tells us in his diary, that he came to Buffalo — 
where he had decided to make his future home — 
with only enough money for one meal, and a 
night's lodging. Almost immediately he was 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



9 



admitted into the office, of the then leading 
lawyers of Western New York, Messrs. Love & 
Tracy. He must, even at this time, have had 
much of that dignified, and winning presence, 
which afterwards drew around him so many 
friends, or the doors of that office would never 
have been opened to him, for he himself was 
his only recommendation. That he won his way 
rapidly into popular favor is evident, for at the 
celebration of the Semi-Centennial of our national 
existence, he was chosen to voice for the city, the 
feelings of that memorable hour. His oration is 
still remembered for" its poetic imagery and beau- 
tiful diction. 

What Buffalo was in that year of 1825, is 
pictured for us by his own pen ; in his Quarter 
Century Sermon, he says: "The population of 
the then village, was about 2,500. At that 
time, that part lying east of Washington street, 
was an almost inaccessible morass ; while the 
territory lying west of Franklin, and north of 
Chippewa and Niagara, was an almost un- 
broken forest, where the huntsman often pur- 
sued the game abounding in the primeval 
woods. I remember well, that within a year 
or two after I became a resident of this city, 



IO 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



an enormous panther was killed a little be- 
yond North street, in the rear of what was 
then called the Cotton farm. Some of the old 
residents will remember that the captors of this 
formidable animal, one of unusual dimensions, 
had their trophy upon exhibition, at the old 
Farmers' Hotel on Main street, for some time. 

During the first year of my residence the Erie 
Canal was completed. I saw the waters of the 
Atlantic poured into Lake Erie, one of the 
ceremonies of the celebration of the great 
enterprise which united the lakes with the 
ocean. Between Buffalo, and Black Rock, there 
was then a decided rivalry, the inhabitants of 
these two villages striving manfully to fix in 
their respective localities the focus of trade, and 
exhibiting toward each other an enmity like that 
anciently existing between the Jews, and the 
Samaritans. Of course, they could not celebrate 
the completion of the Erie Canal together; 
hence there were two celebrations, and two first 
boats to pass from the lake to Albany — and 
which should take the precedence ? — a moment- 
ous question at the time ! I do not now 
remember whether General Porter, the Magnus 
Apollo of Black Rock, or Judge Wilkeson, the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



Jupiter Tonans of Buffalo, arrived first at the 
capital of the State. Happily, these contro- 
versies are now matters of history ; the two 
rival villages are utterly lost in the prosperous 
and populous city which has absorbed them 
both." In the following year, for the purpose of 
enlarging somewhat his very meagre income, he 
started an academic school on Main street, near 
Clinton. His reputation was already so well 
established, that very quickly the seats in his 
room, were filled with scholars. Some who 
were that winter under his instruction, are still 
among the most influential men of our city, and 
have cheerfully given their testimony to his abil- 
ities as a teacher. In 1827, he was made Deputy 
Clerk of Erie county; and on February 19, 1828, 
he was admitted to the Bar. 

His life during the first year of practice was 
not very different from that of his professional 
associates. In the last month of the famous 
twelve occurred the one romance of his life, his 
marriage to Mary E. Johnson, daughter of Dr. 
Ebenezer Johnson, afterwards the first Mayor of 
Buffalo. This was an elopement ; but it was 
probably the most dignified elopement that has 
ever taken place since the world began. For 



12 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



reasons, which both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson sub- 
sequently saw were insufficient, they had opposed 
their daughter's marriage. Mr. Lord made but 
little effort to conceal his intention of carrying 
out his purpose, and the wedding was witnessed 
by a large number of the leading people of the 
village. During his ministerial life, Dr. Lord had 
no firmer friends than Dr. and Mrs. Johnson. 

At the time of his marriage, he was a very 
regular attendant upon the services of the First, 
the only Presbyterian Church then in the vil- 
lage. He was soon elected a trustee, and took 
much interest in the temporal welfare of the 
society. He was unwilling to go further. To 
become a Christian, required sacrifices which 
he had no desire to make. Some phases of 
the religious experience through which he soon 
passed, have been preserved on the pages of his 
journal. It was a strong man's struggle with a 
strong will, but the victory was complete. When 
his mother was told that her son had offered 
prayer in one of the church meetings, she wept 
with gladness, and said that her greatest wish 
had been granted ; her son had become, she felt 
assured, a sincere Christian, and she was ready 
to depart in peace. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



13 



There was still another struggle before him. 
He began to feel that he ought to become a 
preacher of the Gospel. It was not easy for 
him to relinquish the hopes of the large wealth 
which he saw already gathering. But he was 
not long in making the decision. In 1 83 1 , he 
entered Auburn Seminary, for the study of the- 
ology. He might, in a few months' preparation, 
with the foundation he already had, have been 
admitted to the ministry without a regular 
theological course; but Avith his love of thor- 
oughness, he refused this offer, though anxious 
to commence the work at once. 

After graduating at Auburn, and spending a 
few months in preaching at the little village of 
Fayetteville, in this State, he was ordained, and 
installed over the Presbyterian Church of Gen- 
eseo, Livingston Co., N. Y., in September, 1833. 
Of the character of his preaching at this time, we 
may judge not only from its fruits, which were 
very remarkable, but by the testimony of some 
who sat under it. It was thoroughly evangelical. 
His sermons were less thoughtful, but not less 
earnest, than after his removal to Buffalo, where 
he felt the spur and answered to it. His theolog- 
ical stand-point varied but little from the time 



14 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



when he left the Seminary, to the hour of his 
death. He stood firmly on the creed which Mil- 
ton has clothed with immortal words in Paradise 
Lost ; which Augustine, and Luther, and Calvin, 
and Knox, and Bunyan, and Whitefield, and Rob- 
ert Hall preached with a power, before which 
selfishness and sin slunk away abashed. He was 
intensely orthodox according to the Genevan 
standards. His faith was not born of ignorance, 
but of the travail of a mind, too honest to reject 
any portion of a creed, of which Mr. Froude says, 
when comparing it with other theological systems, 
" Calvinism is nearer to the facts, however harsh 
or foreboding those facts may seem." 

If his statement of doctrine was of such form, 
and flavor, as to recall the preaching of the six- 
teenth century, it was not that he differed in 
belief from the vast majority of the reformed 
clergy of his, or the present day, rather that he 
was unwilling to re-translate, into more modern 
forms, the truths which had been the bone and 
sinew of Scotland and England, both the Old 
and New. Our English Bible to-day, is a very 
different book in appearance, from that which 
King James' translators gave to the world. The 
words have altered their form, though every sen- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



15 



tence speaks the same truth now, as then. Dr. 
Lord loved the old, better than the new. He 
feared, and there was sufficient cause, that in the 
sentences, whose form was novel, false doctrine 
might without suspicion be embodied. All his 
life long, he loved to seek the old paths, and 
walk in them. If he ever allowed himself less 
liberty than would have been lawful, he was 
more than compensated for his loss, in the 
straightness of his course, and the steadiness of 
his step. 

While he worked on at Geneseo, the progress 
of events in Buffalo, was causing the way to be 
opened for his return to the city in which he 
had been known only as a lawyer, and a teacher. 
In 1835 the First Presbyterian Church had sent 
out a colony. The Presbytery of Buffalo organ- 
ized these thirty-three members into a society, 
with the name of the Pearl Street Presbyte- 
rian Church, on November 15th, of the same 
year. They were holding their services in a 
building which Dr. Lord himself has thus de- 
scribed : " The edifice was rudely constructed of 
hemlock boards doubled upon scantling, and 
filled in with tan-bark. Its cost was about three 
hundred dollars." By this society, a unanimous 
and hearty call was placed in his hands.' Un- 



i6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



willing as he was, to leave the people to whom 
he had become greatly attached, hoping that in 
time he would be able to fulfill his long-cherished 
plan of working in the valley of the Mississippi, 
he yet felt that this was an opportunity of such 
large usefulness that he dare not refuse it. The 
call was accepted. He preached his first sermon 
in his new charge, in the month of November, 
1835. In a year from that time, the prosperous 
young society had completed a church building, 
at a cost of some thirty thousand dollars. It 
was of a form so peculiar, as to be still vividly 
remembered by all who ever worshipped within 
its walls. Built in the shape of an egg, lighted 
from above, it was considered by a newspaper 
correspondent of the time, to be " not unlike the 
famous city Temple of London." 

But the pastor soon became more famous 
than the church. His preaching forced atten- 
tion even from those who were able to sleep 
through the musical services, which, by the aid 
of a well-trained choir, and so large a number 
of musical instruments that they were popularly 
called a " brass band," were by no means un- 
imposing. His thought was original, and his 
courage in attacking the popular sins of the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



people, was leonine. The famous French preach- 
ers, were not more fearless than was he. During 
his ministry, his life was more than once threat- 
ened by men who knew no other way to silence 
a tongue, whose arguments they could not answer. 

He was a rapid writer, for all his life long he 
was as great a lover of books, almost as Macaulay 
himself, and he was full of information on nearly 
every subject. Facts, and theories, had not 
been tumbled so hurriedly, or promiscuously into 
the corners of his brain that only a laborious 
process of digging could exhume them. His 
knowledge was ticketed ; what he wanted he 
knew where to find at once. His mind was 
trained to do its best, without being whipped 
to its task. Many of his most eloquent sermons 
and addresses, were prepared so quickly, that from 
the pen of a man less thoroughly well informed, 
they would have been superficial, and uninter- 
esting. " He writes rapidly," says Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, " who writes out of his own head," and 
Dr. Lord was one who had rarely to refer to a 
book, after he took his seat at his desk. 

In the city of which he had now become a res- 
ident for the second time, he felt an interest which 
never shrank. He loved Buffalo ; he loved to 



iS 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



praise her beautiful streets, and to hear others 
praise them. Among his poems, which were pub- 
lished in a volume in 1869, he has not forgotten 
to sound her honor. 

Queen of the Lakes, whose tributary seas 

Stretch from the frozen regions of the North - 

To Southern climates, where the wanton breeze 
O'er field and forest goes rejoicing forth. 

As Venice, to the Adriatic Sea 

Was wedded, in her brief, but glorious day; 
So broader, purer waters, are to thee, 

To whom a thousand streams, a dowry pay. 

What tho' the wild winds o'er thy waters sweep, 
While lingering Winter, howls along thy shore, 

And solemnly "deep calieth unto deep," ■ 
While storm and cataract responsive roar. 

'Tis music fitting for the brave and free, 
Where Enterprise and Commerce vex the waves ; 

The soft voluptuous airs of Italy 

Breathe among ruins, and are woo'd by slaves. 

Thou art the Sovereign City of the Lakes, 

Crowned and acknowledged ; may thy fortunes be 

Vast as the domain which thine empire takes, 
And onward as thy waters to the sea. 

His affection for Buffalo was shown not in 
poetry alone. To her he bequeathed his mag- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



19 



nificent library of several thousand volumes, 
containing many rare and valuable works. 

No one of her citizens was more often called 
upon than he, to speak as her representative, 
upon occasions when an oration was demanded. 
Such requests were never refused, though by 
them, his energies, strained already in his heavy 
professional duties, were at times sorely over- 
taxed. By his Presbytery, he was sent as a 
representative to the General Assembly of 1836, 
the last truly oecumenical council of the denom- 
ination which was to meet till 1870. The sepa- 
ration which had long been widened between the 
two parties of the Church, was consummated in 
1 837, when two organizations were formed, which 
were popularly called "Old" and "New" School. 
That he would feel more in sympathy with the 
conservatives of the old school, was made certain 
by all his methods of thought. For a score of 
years, his Church stood alone as the representative 
of that type of Presbyterianism in Buffalo. But no 
one rejoiced more heartily than he, when in 1869 
the two " schools " were merged into one Presby- 
terian Church. 

He was ready to raise his voice in protest, when- 
ever he saw any deserting the forms of faith, to 



20 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



which he was so intensely attached, both by edu- 
cation, and conviction. Those were days in which 
a man of courage and individuality, who would not 
be swept along with the crowd, had to sleep with 
his armor on. The land was overrun with theologi- 
cal and philosophical freebooters, who were terrible 
as destructive, but feeble as constructive forces. 
There was no ark that they feared to touch. 
There was no altar which they respected. In 
France, Comte had crushed and mangled — so it 
was believed — all existing systems of theology, 
and ignoring even the fragments, had built up, of 
freshly-hewn stones, something which was called 
the " Religion of Humanity." In England, many 
had become disciples of the French Positivist. 
Harriet Martineau was preparing to write the 
" Atkinson Letters." The nature of man was 
being restudied, and results were reached, that 
were subversive of the existence of a God, and 
of personal responsibility. Oxford was torn with 
the dissensions of Ritualist and Evangelical. 
Brothers — like the Newmans — were separating,, 
one turning to the Romish Church, the other to 
Atheism. Here in America, the foundations of 
men's faith were being as rudely shaken. In 
Boston, Theodore Parker, with an eloquence 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



21 



seldom surpassed, was drawing crowds of young 
men away from orthodoxy, and giving them, in 
its stead, beautiful words, and inspiring moral 
precepts, but no atonement for sin, no assured 
hope beyond the grave. 

The young pastor of the Pearl Street Church 
had eyes and ears open. He knew what was 
going on in the great world. He was not one 
to stand idly, witnessing the encroachment of 
what he believed to be fatal errors, and utter 
no warning. He spoke plainly in his sermons 
to young men, a volume of which was published 
in 1838, and he spoke with equal plainness in 
his more public discourses, and lectures. In an 
address delivered before the students of Ham- 
ilton College, he says : 

" In the nineteenth century, the grand hin- 
drance to the progress of the Gospel is to be 
found in the perversion, obscuration, or open 
denial of the supernatural element of Christian- 
ity. The philosophy of Locke and his followers, 
and of Hobbes and Bentham, who have super- 
added the utilitarian scheme to the materialism 
of the former, are thought by their admirers to 
have disenchanted the universe of the spiritual 
and supernatural. There is no longer a 'divinity 

3 



22 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



that stirs within us,' or without us. The innate 
and ideal are consigned to the tomb of the 
Capulets, and the mine and the cotton factory 
are the divinities of mountain and rivulet. Of 
the effect of this philosophy upon the fine arts, 
this is not the time nor place to speak ; it is 
enough to say, that this philosophy is more 
grossly material than the polytheistic, which, 
though it could not elevate man religiously, at 
least preserved his reverence for the super- 
natural, his conceptions of the ideal, and gave 
to the world those miracles of art, or, to use 
the words of one of our own poets : 

' Those forms of beauty seen no more, 
Yet once to art's rapt vision given.' " 

From 1840, to 1850, his thought rapidly ripened, 
but lost nothing of its freshness, and elasticity. In 
1 841, the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity 
from his alma mater, Hamilton, was conferred upon 
him. During these years he received more invita- 
tions than he could accept, from literary associa- 
tions of the towns, and cities, to deliver lectures. 
Few men at that time could call together a larger 
audience ; very few gave their audiences as solid, 
or acceptable mental pabulum. His lectures on 
" The Land of Ophir," " The Progress of Civil- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



23 



ization," " The Star Aldebaran," " The War of 
the Titans," and "The Romance of History," 
were famous throughout this, and the neighbor- 
ing States. A number of them, gathered into a 
volume, were published in 185 1. That these 
platform utterances were not for amusement 
alone, the reading of a single page of any of 
them would be sufficient evidence. At the close 
of his lecture on " The Star Aldebaran," after a 
beautiful description of what that star has looked 
upon in the past, and what it may look upon in 
the cycles of the future, he says : 

" Thy grave, O hearer, shall Aldebaran watch 
when the fire of thine eye is quenched, when the 
bloom on thy cheek has faded, and guard the 
portals of thy grave, until the day when the 
Master of Life shall cast down the throne, and 
break the dominion of Death. Thy spirit will 
soon leave its house of clay, and pass out upon 
the universe, and perchance, to this distant star 
thou mayest wing thine uninterrupted way ; and, 
bethink thee, as thou surveyest its glories, that 
its light is resting upon the remote planet of 
thy birth, and glistening upon the marble that 
affection has reared to thy memory — over the 
deserted and decaying tabernacle that enshrined 
thy soul, and which is again to receive it when 



24 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



raised a spiritual, and incorruptible body, by that 
word of power, that from emptiness, and noth- 
ingness, from darkness and chaos, summoned at 
the beginning, matter and motion, light and 
life." 

In his equally famous lecture on the " Ro- 
mance of History," having described the origin 
and results of the Crusades, in sentences which 
are almost as rhythmical as blank verse, he asks : 

" How is it that the Christian, and the Hebrew 
have alike suffered the soil sacred to both, to 
remain cursed by Mahomedan hordes, and all 
her sacred places dishonored, and blasphemed 
by the sign of the crescent ? There is no other 
explanation than the prophecies of the Bible, 
which declare that Judea must remain in the 
hands of the spoiler, and the abomination of 
desolation continue in the holy place, until the 
set time for the return of the Hebrew, when he 
shall acknowledge him whom his fathers cruci- 
fied ; and so to-day, the Mosque of Omar stands 
on the site of the temple, and the Christian 
pilgrim must pay a price to behold the sacred 
places of Jerusalem ; he must undergo the scru- 
tiny of a bearded Turk before he can kneel at 
the sepulchre of the Saviour." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



25 



Of the year 1849, when the city was shrouded 
for many months in gloom, he speaks in his 
Quarter Century Sermon : 

" During my ministry in this .city, we have at 
various times been visited by the pestilence 
which walketh in darkness. No advent of the 
cholera during my pastorate, has been so severe 
as that of 1849. This disease commenced its 
ravages early in June of that year, and did not 
wholly disappear before the month of November. 
At times, the number of deaths was from forty 
to fifty in a day. A general gloom spread over 
the city ; men looked anxiously in each other's 
faces; those who were in full health to-day 
were coffined on the morrow. Every day the 
names of some well-known citizens were cat- 
alogued among the dead. Many who were at- 
tacked and recovered, were reported for a time 
as deceased. More than once I was saluted 
joyfully in the streets by some friend who had 
heard that I was dead. It was in truth, a time 
of mourning, lamentation and woe ; and the sad- 
ness of the people was like that of the ancient 
Hebrews in the valley of Hadad-rimmon. The 
remembrances of that disastrous summer will 
never be effaced from my mind." 



26 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



He began the year 1850 with a New Year's 
Sermon, from which an extract was widely copied 
for its beauty by the newspapers : 

" The impressions made upon the sands by the 
current of human actions and human passions 
during the year that is past, are now hardened 
and fixed in stone. As the soft substance of 
clay, receiving the impression of the waters and 
marking their motion, course and flow, becomes 
at length a rock, whose imperishable engravings 
are read by succeeding generations ; and as the 
growth and products of trees and plants, and the 
anatomy of animals of different ages, make their 
impressions in the earth, which, anon, hardening 
into stone, reveals their forms and characteristics 
to subsequent periods, so the tablets of time 
passed, retain and reveal the actions, the passions, 
the events, which are to be fully disclosed when 
the strata shall be broken up, and the deposit of 
different ages, and every race, shall be read in 
the great day of final revelation. This is the 
true eternity of temporal things. Who would 
think that the yielding sand, in which the foot- 
step of the passer-by leaves its impression, should 
reveal that foot-print a thousand years afterwards, 
to the men of a remote generation ? Who would 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



2; 



believe, unless it had been so abundantly proven, 
that the figures, wrought in the soft clay made 
in sport, which the next rain might be expected 
to wash away, should appear in another age, 
graven in a rock as with a pen of iron ? These 
results science has demonstrated in the natural 
world. They are in the moral world indicated 
by experience, and attested by revelation. What 
an extraordinary and beautiful analogy is this. 
As in the natural world the most minute traces 
of the lowest forms of life and action, are dis- 
closed by a process at once universal and exact ; 
so, the words we speak, the thoughts we con- 
ceive, the actions we perform, falling upon the 
sand remain fixed in an eternal record. Philos- 
ophers say, that the earth retains and reverber- 
ates every uttered sound forever. We make our 
thoughts, our words and our actions, in time, our 
companions through eternity. With what impor- 
tance does this view clothe the life that now is ; 
with what power the things, which we are apt to 
regard as idle dreams, which seem to perish as 
they pass, but whose shadows, falling on the cur- 
tains of eternity, are fastened forever. What an 
event is the beginning of a new year, in which 
we are to write for the world to come on the 



28 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



strata of which — to pursue our geological figure 
— all actions are to be graven, as with the point 
of a diamond upon a tablet of adamant, for an 
everlasting record. How do these thoughts dig- 
nify the passing moment, and the passage of the 
years of time, on whose fleeting sands are writ- 
ten the enduring records, which, for good or ill, 
we are to read throughout the cycles of our 
endless existence." 

It was also in this year, on Thanksgiving Day, 
that he delivered the most memorable discourse 
of his life. If the Church of that day, was called 
to pass through struggles which some feared, and 
many hoped would end in death ; the State, had 
reached a crisis not less momentous. In 1620, 
a Dutch trading-vessel landed twenty negro slaves 
in Virginia. What prophet could then have fore- 
told the stupendous issues which hung upon that 
apparently insignificant event ? 

In 1850, all men saw that the permanency of 
the republic was imperiled from one cause alone — 
the existence of slavery in the Southern States. 
The South was solid in its determination to 
maintain a system which had made her planters 
wealthy, and which promised more in the future, 
than in the past. The North was divided, by no 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



2 9 



means equally. A large and influential portion 
sympathized with the South, on the ground, that 
slavery was constitutional. Another large body 
of Northern citizens wished for the abandonment 
of all enforced labor, but saw no way in which 
it could be done. There was beside, a small, 
but now rapidly-increasing number of so-called 
abolitionists. They believed slavery to be the 
gangrene on the body politic, and like John 
Brown, many of them were ready to shed their 
blood, if by no other means, the foul spot could 
be removed. Some of these were men true and 
noble. Some of them were over-zealous, and 
reckless as to the instruments they used in the 
consummation of their desires. 

A Fugitive Slave Law had been enacted on 
September 18, 1850, which authorized the slave- 
holder to arrest and seize his fugitive slaves in 
any State of the Union. No law was ever more 
thoroughly discussed or more bitterly opposed. 
It was the one subject of which men spoke to 
each other, as they met on the streets and in their 
places of business. It was to be expected, that a 
clergyman of decided opinions, would make use 
of the opportunity offered by a service of a na- 
tional character, to discuss a question so impor- 



3Q 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



tant ill all its bearings. Dr. Lord was one who 
had the most intense reverence for " the powers 
that be." He believed them ordained of God. 
"We take the ground," said he in that sermon, 
" that the action of civil governments within their 
appropriate jurisdiction, is final and conclusive 
upon the citizen." From this premise he drew 
the conclusion, that unless it could be proven, 
that God has never permitted slavery under any 
circumstances, no citizen has a right to resist 
laws which recognize and protect that institu- 
tion. The sermon was printed, and widely dis- 
tributed, and read, and misunderstood. It was 
believed that it opened the way for governmental 
anarchy; that it would authorize a government 
in making theft, and arson, and murder, legal or 
obligatory. He had written " the action of civil 
governments within their appropriate jurisdic- 
tion" is final; but in the heat of controversy, 
men leaped to conclusions, and Dr. Lord was 
called a Judas, and a Benedict Arnold. That his 
sermon not only expressed the opinion of a large 
number of the most highly-respected men of the 
country, but expressed it with a logical force sur- 
passing all similar pamphlets, is attested by many 
letters which were received when the discussion, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



31 



caused by its publication, was at its height. Dr. 
Spencer, a clergyman of Brooklyn whose reputa- 
tion was national, wrote him of the discourse in 
terms of highest commendation. " It is the clear- 
est exposition of the truth we have yet had," he 
said. From Washington, President Fillmore sent 
the following letter 1 

Washington, D. C, Jan. 13, 185 1. 
Rev. J. C. Lord, 

My Dear Sir : " The cares of state" leave me 
no time for general reading, and it was not till 
this evening, that I found leisure to peruse your 
admirable sermon on the " Higher Law and 
Fugitive Slave Bill." I return you my thanks, 
most cordially and sincerely, for this admirable 
discourse. You have rendered the nation a great 
and valuable service, and I am highly gratified 
to learn, that thousands and tens of thousands 
have been reprinted in New York, and sent here, 
and are now being distributed under the franks 
of members of Congress. It cannot fail to do 
good. It reaches a class of people of excellent 
intentions, but somewhat bigoted prejudices, who 
could be reached in no other way. Again I 



3^ 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



thank you for the service you have done my 
country, and am 

Truly yours, 

Millard Fillmore. 

Ten years later, like Dr. Lord himself, nearly 
all who had then sympathized most cordially with 
him, became known as earnest advocates of the 
Union. In many instances the same principles 
were held, but the secession of the Southern 
States, reversed the conclusions which had been 
reached under very different circumstances. 

By the General Assembly which met in 1852, in 
Charleston, S. C, he was elected moderator by 
acclamation, an honor which has been conferred 
upon but few. Early in the same year, the new 
church edifice, whose foundations had been laid 
in 1848, at the time of the sale of the egg-shaped 
building, was dedicated, as the Central Presby- 
terian Church, a name which for reasons then 
considered sufficient, had been substituted for 
that of Pearl Street. The new church audi- 
torium was at that time, the largest west of New 
York, but it was crowded, even to the aisles, for 
many Sabbath evenings in succession, during the 
series of sermons, which it was his custom to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



33 



deliver in the winter months. Those on the 
''Connection of Sacred and Profane History" are 
still fresh in the memory of the people. Near the 
close of one of these, on the " Descendants of 
Ishmael," occurs a description so beautiful, that 
we will make this page the amber to preserve it, 
for the enjoyment of all who shall ever read this 
sketch. 

" Over what sacred monuments does the Ish- 
maelite, their divinely-appointed guardian, keep 
watch and ward. He waits by Hor, where Aaron 
reposes in his last sleep, and conducts the 
traveler amid the eternal solitudes of desert, and 
mountain, to Jebel Haroun, or Aaron's Mount, 
and shows him the sepulchre of the Hebrew 
priest. Sinai rises from the desert, with the same 
abrupt majesty, as when, from its fire-clad sum- 
mits, God uttered the law. There still is the vast 
ampitheatre where the children of Israel, tremb- 
ling with fear, beheld the solid mountain move 
at the touch of its Maker, its summit crowned 
with thunders, its foundation shaken by earth- 
quakes, and heard the words of the first covenant 
proclaimed, amid blackness, and tempest in the 
tones of Omnipotence, and with the sound of 



34 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



that trumpet, which heard once more, shall wake 
the dead and summon them to the judgment of 
the eternal law to whose annunciation it gave 
witness. The Arab guards this awful monument, 
his shout alone breaks the solitudes of Jebel et 
Tur, the bells of his camels, alone disturb the 
perpetual silence which Sinai keeps, since from 
her granite precipices God uttered his voice. 
The wild man of the desert guides the traveler 
to Horeb, the Mount of condemnation, where, 
awestruck, he gazes upon the rocks which seem 
to have been fashioned in their wild and savage 
grandeur for the utterance of the Law in the 
ears of the apostate children of Adam. To the 
prophetical nation, who retain unchanged, the 
manners and customs of the Patriarchs, is com- 
mitted the custody, not only of the sacred places 
within their own territory, but of the adjacent 
soil. Over Palestine, the Arab wanders, like a 
spectre of the past. He waters his camels at the 
wells of Isaac and Jacob, he haunts that waveless 
lake which entombs the cities of the plains, the 
only living thing in that valley of death, so judg- 
ment smitten, that time, which changes all, has 
left untouched its Dead Sea, in which is found no 
form of life, and its blasted borders, upon which 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



35 



no dew falls, or rain from heaven to water the 
parched and desolate earth. As he flits around 
the sea of death, so he guards the city of the 
dead, the rock-bound fortress of Edom. He 
dwells in all the places of Israel, and Esau, the 
living likeness of the past, beside its hallowed 
tombs, the present witness, verifying the inscrip- 
tions upon its ancient monuments, the sole 
abiding representative of Abraham, remaining on 
the soil rendered sacred to all time, and to all 
generations, by the utterance there, of the Divine 
Oracles, by the manifestation of the powers of 
the world to come, by the advent and expiation 
of the Son of God." 

It had been his custom, to preach year after 
year without any vacation. During the winter 
of 1859-60, feeling the need of a change, he 
spent six months, by leave of absence from his 
Church, in Mobile. The time was used not in 
recuperation alone. He preached every Sabbath 
at the Government Street Church. This was his 
only absence from his parish, during his whole 
pastorate of thirty-eight years. He returned from 
Mobile just before the breaking out of the civil 
war. While the conflict lasted between the 
North and South, he never wavered in his ad- 



36 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



herance to the Northern cause. Right, and law, 
he believed, were with her armies, and with that 
belief, it would have been impossible for him to 
have taken any other position, than the one he 
so firmly held, and so eloquently advocated till 
peace was declared. 

That one who had long filled so prominent a 
position, would often be urged to accept invita- 
tions to some other field of labor, was to be ex- 
pected ; but the calls which he received, whether 
to other pastorates, or to occupy a professor's 
chair in a theological seminary, were declined, 
with but one exception, that from a Church in 
Pittsburgh, without any interruption whatever in 
his relationship to his own Church. But in this 
instance he was entreated so heartily to remain, 
by his own people, and many of the leading citi- 
zens of Buffalo, that he felt it right to refuse the 
call from that center of Old School Presbyter- 
ianism. From 1868-70 he began to feel, as he 
had not before, that his pastoral duties, were 
somewhat overburdensome. He was not one to 
complain ; and only after his people had made, 
and pressed the request did he give his consent 
to the calling of a colleague. The Rev. A. L. 
Benton, of Lima, N. Y., accepted the request of 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



37 



the Central Church, and became in 1870 his co- 
pastor. Of him Dr. Lord never failed to speak in 
terms of high commendation. This relationship 
was severed in 1872, by Mr. Benton's acceptance 
of a call from the Presbyterian Church at Fre- 
donia, N. Y., where he is still laboring among a 
united people, with much success. It was now 
Dr. Lord's request, that the Church should ac- 
cept his resignation, so that the pastorate might 
be given entirely into the hands of his successor. 
With great reluctance, this request was at last 
granted; and in September, 1873, the relationship 
which had existed for nearly forty years was 
dissolved. 

During the few years which remained to him 
his failing powers were cheerfully used to further 
every cause of righteousness and mercy. The 
last extended journey of his life, was to Cleve- 
land, as a Commissioner to the General Assembly, 
an appointment which he had desired, in order 
that, by his influence, resolutions might there be 
adopted, recognizing and commending, the work 
of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals. He was one of the founders of that 
organization, and was always one of its most 
hearty and liberal supporters. 
4 



38 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



While health permitted, he was a regular 
attendant upon the services of the Church, where 
he had so long preached the word, and no more 
sympathetic or uncritical hearer ever sat in its 
pews. His happiness was great whenever a meas- 
ure of success was granted to his successor. His 
most earnest efforts were exerted by voice, and 
act, to enlarge, to the measure of his hope, the 
prosperity for which he offered most fervent 
prayers. All this he did in a manner so unas- 
suming and beautiful, as to win the admiration 
and love, of many to whom he had never before 
revealed the more tender side of his nature. 
For he was a man, whose character was so built 
up of contradictions, that he was always specially 
liable to be misunderstood. He was stern, but 
so gentle of heart, that often as he read an affect- 
ing passage of some book, he would lean his 
head upon his hand, and weep like a woman 
over a tale of suffering. He would not suffer 
his personal rights to be trampled upon, yet no 
man was more often the victim of excessive 
kindheartedness. He was zealous in his accu- 
mulation of wealth, and economical in its use; 
yet he preached all his life for a nominal salary, 
and few men of his limited means, were more 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



39 



ready to bestow chanty upon the needy, or to 
lend his name to aid a friend in pecuniary embar- 
rassment. He loved old truths, and old forms, 
yet his sermons were always marked by their 
originality of expression, and freedom from the 
rigid rules of the scholastics, as to arrangement 
of materials. He was systematic in nothing 
except theology. He had high views as to the 
authority of the ministerial office, but he was free 
from professional affectations, and never sought 
or desired any " benefit of clergy." 

He had both the feminine and masculine tem- 
perament. He was not by any means indifferent 
to commendation, but he was not to be turned 
aside by opposition, or discouraged by failure. 
He delighted in the New Testament, and when 
unable to read himself, he would ask repeatedly, 
in the course of a morning, for some chapter from 
the Gospels or Epistles, but he had a reverence 
as great, an affection as warm, for the Old Testa- 
ment. " He loved to strike again, the harp of 
David, to place to his lips the golden trumpet 
of Isaiah," to clash the cymbals of Miriam, to 
cry with the exultation of the triumphant He- 
brews, " who is like unto thee, O Lord, among 
the gods, who is like thee, glorious in holiness, 



4Q 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



fearful in praises, doing wonders." He expressed 
freely, and with decision, his desires concerning 
trifles, but throughout the last two years of his 
life, unable through failing vision to read a word, 
lover of books that he was, and eager to have his 
friends read to him, he uttered no word of com- 
plaint, he expressed no wish that his eyesight had 
been spared. " The ways of the Almighty are 
unimpeachable," was one of the last sentences 
he ever spoke. 

While never denying, in mock humility, those 
powers of mind and person, which made him so 
successful as a public speaker, he relied as a 
preacher of the Gospel for success, on that God 
of whom he sings in his ode to the Deity. 

O God, unchangeable and infinite, 

In whom all being is, and was, before 

Creation broke upon the eternal night, 

Or ancient silence heard the rush and roar 

Of mingled elements, when earth and sea 

And air, and chaos, strove for mastery — 

While Darkness, brooded o'er the giant strife — 

And earth was void and formless — without light or life — 

Yet in thy counsels, from eternity, 

All things were manifest — all creatures known 

And visible, to thine Omniscient eye, 

As when the light — at thy commandment shone 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



41 



Around the new-formed universe — when sang 
The morning stars, and heaven's high arches rang 
With shouts of praise — creation's jubilee 
Like mingling waters, of the upheaving sea — 

******* 

Millions of eyes, O God, are gazing out 

Upon thy works — Who knows them ? Who hath found 

The bound of Being? Philosophy, in doubt 

Explores, irreverent, the eternal round, — 

And Reason wanders wide, till she has heard 

The still, small voice, of thy revealed Word, 

Which unfolds mysteries to her darkened sight 

And proves — whatever else is wrong — that God is right. 

No eye hath seen. Thee — uncreated One ! 

Dwelling in the thick darkness, which conceals 

The glory, none can view and live. Thy Son 

Alone, to the whole universe reveals 

The God-head's brightness, whose transcendent beam 

Is in the God-man's person, tempered seen; 

The eternal life is bodied forth in sight — 

The Finite apprehends in Him the Infinite. 

Without children of his own, he lavished un- 
stintedly his fatherly love upon an adopted 
daughter. When in 1873, her son, a noble and 
chivalric officer of the regular army, was mas- 
sacred by the Indians, his grief was like that of 
one who weeps for his own flesh and blood. 

His lassitude increased rapidly during the fall 
of 1876. He knew, and often said,, that he would 



4 2 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



spend the winter in heaven. He was so feeble 
at the opening of the new year, that his easy 
chair was exchanged for the bed which he was 
never again to leave, till carried to the grave by 
the hands of men who loved him. For two days 
he was unconscious of earthly sights or sounds. 
Like Christian in the land of Beulah, he was 
but waiting for the coming of the summons from 
the Celestial City. On Sunday, the 2 1st of 
January, at the hour of evening service, he drew 
one deep breath, and his long life was over. 
Within sight of the home where he spent twenty- 
five happy years, encircled on every side by the 
parishioners and friends of his youth and matu- 
rity, his body lies in Forest Lawn, of which, in 
the flush of his ripe and vigorous manhood, with 
the thought it may be of this hour he wrote : 

Place for the dead ! 
Not in the noisy City's crowd and glare, 
By heated walls and dusty streets, but where 
The balmy breath of the free summer air 
Moves, murmuring softly, o'er the new-made grave, 
Rustling among the boughs which wave, 

Above the dwellers there. 

Rest for the dead ! 
Far, far from the turmoil and strife of trade, 
Let the broken house of the soul be laid ; 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



43 



Where the violets blossom in the shade, 
And the voices of nature do softly fall 
O'er the silent sleepers all — 

Where rural graves are made. 

Place for the dead ! 
In the quiet glen where the wild vines creep, 
And the desolate mourner may wait and weep 
In some silent place, o'er the loved who sleep, 
Nor sights, nor sounds profane, disturb their moan, 
With God, and with the dead alone, 

"Deep calleth unto deep." 



44 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 

FUNERAL SERVICES. 



ADDRESS BY REV. DR. A. T. CHESTER. 

" Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, 
or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at 
the cistern ; then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." 

STANDING on this solemn occasion, in this 
sacred desk, which our departed friend and 
brother honored for so many years of his long 
ministry, and to which his death seems to give a 
new consecration, I would give utterance to words 
which shall be in accordance with his life-long 
teachings, and with the example he has given us. 

I have chosen therefore, as the basis of a few 
remarks, these words of scripture which were so 
often on his lips. He used them in his prayer, or 
in his address, on every funeral occasion at which 
he officiated in his later years. This splendid 
imagery of the Hebrew poet was especially im- 
pressive, as his fine imagination gave background 
to every tint and shade, — and when some divine 
message of momentous bearing was thus revealed, 



FUNERAL SERVICES. 



45 



for him it had a double charm. He accepted the 
teaching as from God, while each grand figure 
stirred his lively fancy, and every telling word 
stamped itself upon his faithful memory. 

To everything of earth there must be an end. 
To the longest life, though it reach beyond the 
three-score years and ten, the time must come 
when the throbbing heart shall cease to beat, 
when the silver cord of the nervous system shall 
be broken, and the brain in its golden bowl shall 
cease to thrill with thought, when all the mech- 
anism of life shall cease to move, like the breaking 
of the pitcher at the fountain, or the wreck of the 
wheel at the cistern, — the most striking emblems 
of disaster among the Orientals, where water and 
life are nearly synonymous. 

To the most successful ministry, though it be 
continued beyond a generation, the end must 
come. Though plans be successful, and treasures 
be counted by the million, yet must the owner 
die ; though life be prolonged in the enjoyment 
of financial victory, yet at length the end must 
come, to the richest as to the poorest ; to those 
of noblest intellect and highest culture, as to the 
dull and uneducated. " For the living know they 
shall die." We do not need inspired teaching to 



4 6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



convince us of this. We know it, but we do not 
heed it, and so God comes nigh by his providence 
and gives us proof of the momentous fact, as 
some fellow-being is struck down by the angel of 
death, and we are permitted to look upon the cold 
clay on its way to the grave. And even then, 
such is the sluggishness of our spiritual nature — 
while we may be convinced that another is dead, 
we do not always reach the conclusion, each for 
-himself, I too must die. It is the single relig- 
ious design of our funerals, not to comfort the 
living, not to honor the dead, but to impress the 
lesson of mortality, to lead each one who joins in 
the sad procession to say, I too must die. And 
that not for the saddening effect thus produced, 
not to bring gloom and darkness over the mind, 
but to lead to the contemplation of the future 
life, and to the preparation necessary for its happy 
condition. 

This same word that speaks so impressively of 
the end of the mortal also reveals the immortal. 
This invests death with so much interest and gives 
it such importance. " Then shall the dust return 
to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return 
unto God who gave it." This is the proper, most 
natural disposition to make of the decaying body 



FUNERAL SERVICES. 



47 



when life has departed, to bury it in the earth 
and let its disorganized particles return, as soon 
as possible, to the dust from which it was made. 
How much better than any attempt to preserve 
it from utter decay, resulting only in the hideous 
mummy-forms of the Egyptians — how much bet- 
ter than the burning and the preservation of the 
ashes by the Pagans, in their ignorance of God's 
purpose or their want of faith in His power to 
give a spiritual body in place of the natural. Yes, 
even these dear bodies we do not lose by the 
power of death. Out of the dust of their decay 
He who raised them up at first as the habitation 
of the living soul, shall build a spiritual temple 
for the everlasting residence of the immortal 
spirit. But this is the teaching of most import- 
ance : "And the spirit shall return unto God 
who gave it." 

The soul of man, that came from God, shall go 
back to God. That which has such godlike attri- 
butes could have no other origin, can have no 
other destination. While this is purely a doc- 
trine of revelation, it seems also most natural 
and reasonable. Upon each of these glowing 
spirits of ours He retains the creator's claim. 
Made in his likeness and image and by the breath 



4 8 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



of His mouth, it can neither escape His notice 
nor avoid his control. He has fitted it for im- 
mortality, and made immortality its heritage. 

When therefore, death destroys its connection 
with the decaying body, it must make its way 
directly to its maker to learn its everlasting des- 
tination. As neither the fact of existence, nor 
the time and place of our being was left to our 
own choice, as in all this we are under the control 
of the Almighty Maker's will, so our future home 
must be settled by Him — to Him must the spirit 
return as soon as it is freed from its fetters of 
clay — when it becomes capable of reaching the 
divine presence. It cannot stay here, where as 
we know by experience, earthly bodies are essen- 
tial to the spiritual movement and development. 
It cannot go to some other world beyond the 
reach of God's presence, for that presence per- 
vades the entire universe. The spirit in obedi- 
ence to the law of its being must return unto 
God who gave it. Nor are we left in any doubt 
as to the method of securing a favorable recep- 
tion for the immortal part when it shall have put 
off mortality. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
penitence for sin, and the purpose to sin no more, 
and a life spent under the influence of such faith 



FUNERAL SERVICES. 



49 



and penitence, shall secure for us admission to 
the joys of God's special presence in Heaven ; 
for the want of this we are taught we must be 
banished from that joy forever. What moment- 
ous weight is thus given to every death, not that 
a life has ceased on earth, not that a human body 
is given up to be turned back to dust, but that 
a spirit has gone to God to receive its reward 
for eternity; that an earthly probation has come 
to an end, and an unchangeable condition of joy 
or of woe has been begun. These are the sim- 
plest teachings of the word of God upon this 
subject. So we have the solemn warning given 
to each one of us, " Prepare to meet thy God." 
We need a preparation. Sinners as we are, we 
cannot risk a rejection of the spirit, when after 
death it must make its way to God. The proba- 
bility is too great that sin and holiness will not 
agree. We need assurance in some way, that 
even in our imperfection and our guilt, we can 
come before our God acceptably, and while sci- 
ence and philosophy cannot answer, while in our 
deepest unaided reasonings we cannot reach any 
satisfactory result, while darkness and doubt ob- 
scure the entire future, revelation speaks out, and 
immortal life is brought to light by Jesus Christ 



5o 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



in the Gospel. We are creatures of God. We 
have sinned againt him. We deserve eternal 
death. We are doomed to endless woe. But 
the Saviour has come for our relief. He has 
made atonement for us. He has borne our pun- 
ishment. For His sake we may be pardoned. 
We have but to believe on Him, accepting Him 
as our Saviour, and to prove that this belief is 
genuine by a consistent religious life, and then 
for His sake we are restored to God's favor and 
made sure of everlasting life. 

We are living amid religious privileges that we 
may have an opportunity to become the disciples 
of Christ that we may become the friends of 
God. This is the most momentous of all ques- 
tions for each one of us — have I such a belief 
in the Lord Jesus Christ that He has become 
my Saviour? It is to give the answer to this 
question that your spirit and mine, must return 
at once to God, when life is ended. What a 
change is thus made in a moment. Now the 
spirit, joined to the body, is here surrounded by 
the earthly and the mortal, perhaps ignoring the 
existence, or not perceiving the presence of its 
God ; now, in a moment, as disease has accom- 
plished its work, or as some accident brings life 



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to a sudden end, now, in a moment, that spirit, 
your spirit, yourself, is standing before God, far 
removed from all the surroundings of earth and 
of time, to learn your final and eternal destina- 
tion. There is no more uncertainty, no more 
probation, no delay. You must be welcomed as 
one of His own dear children, because you are 
joined by faith to His Son, or must be sent away 
forever, never more to share in His mercy or to 
partake of His love. Is not death important 
then ? Should we not be ready to meet it at 
any unexpected moment? Have you, who meet 
here in presence of the dead, such a hope in 
Christ as will prove an anchor of the soul in the 
trying hour? Have you such a hope, such an 
assurance as he had, who from his coffin, is en- 
forcing these solemn considerations upon you ? 
Do you believe in the Saviour, whose atoning 
sacrifice it was his joy to make known for more 
than forty years? It seems fitting that he should 
be brought here, on his way to the grave, once 
more to utter, though with silent lips, the mes- 
sages of salvation. Will not some of you who 
refused to listen before, now give heed ; though 
being dead, he yet speaketh ? I have sought to 
say what I believe he would wish me to say in 



5^ 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



this solemn audience. I believe, could he speak, 
he would say, " speak not of me in eulogy, but 
proclaim once more salvation by grace through 
the Lord Jesus Christ — speak of impending death, 
of the return of the spirit to God and of the way 
to secure the friendship and everlasting favor of 
God, through Jesus Christ. Let the echoes of 
these great truths, which I have sought to pro- 
claim with my living voice in all these years of 
my ministry, ring over my coffin, while from my 
mute lips the warning comes once more to my 
congregation — to my old friends and neighbors — 
to every one who can hear it, ' Prepare to meet 
thy God.' " 

Yet, I cannot close without a word of another 
kind. Dr. Lord's long and faithful service as a 
preacher of righteousness must be acknowledged 
by his brethren. I have been working by his side 
for nearly thirty years, and it would be an un- 
pardonable omission if I did not bear testimony 
to his faithfulness to all the fundamental doc- 
trines of the gospel, and his fearlessness and 
boldness in proclaiming whatever his own mind 
received as the truth on any religious or political 
question, however unpopular for the time, that 
truth might be. Whichever side he might take, 



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on any important topic of Church or State, he 
was always true to his own convictions, and 
advocated his cause under the influence of the 
purest and noblest principles, both of piety and 
patriotism. Of his success in building up and 
developing this large and important Church, his 
pastor will doubtless speak at large ; but it is a 
grand work of a life-time if nothing else had 
been accomplished. Of his identification with 
Buffalo, and his love for its interests, mention 
has already been made in the action of the city 
government, and in the various resolutions occa- 
sioned by his death. Though for some time 
withdrawn from active life, yet it may be ques- 
tioned whether such a breach could be made by 
the death of any other man in this community. 
We mourn for him as for a father beloved ; we 
cherish his memory; we will seek to profit by 
his example. 

There was something in his life that seems to 
make especially appropriate to himself one of 
his own admirable verses on the Apostle Paul : 

u O miracle of sovereign grace, the persecuting Saul 
Hath run by faith the Christian race, and is 1 such a 
one as Paul 

5 



54 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



The aged,' prisoner of the Lord, whose time is near at 
hand, 

And who looks for his departure as the storm-tossed look 
for land ; 

For there's 'a. house not made with hands' that never 
shall decay, 

The Lord of Hosts, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
in that day." 



ADDRESS BY REV. D. R. FRAZER. 

When God sent the fiery chariot to bear Elijah 
from his work to his rest, so profound was Elisha's 
sense of the great loss he had sustained in the 
removal of his leader, teacher and friend, that, in- 
stead of attempting an analysis of his character, or 
rehearsing the exploits of the departed prophet, he 
cried out in deepest anguish of spirit, " My Father, 
my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen 
thereof!" Realizing the fact that greater than 
all spoken grief is that which is unspoken and 
unspeakable ; realizing the fact that words cannot 
adequately portray the tenderest emotions of the 
heart, Elisha regarded and accepted silence as the 
most befitting expression of his deep grief. 

Lamenting, as we do to-day, the loss of a be- 
loved father in Christ, one whose many years, 
whose personal traits, whose long term and faith- 



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ful service in the Christian ministry entitle him to 
this distinction ; coming, as we do to-day, to pay 
our last sad tributes of respect and affection to 
him before we bear him hence to his rest, we may 
well imitate the example of the prophet, and let 
our words be few, since our words, be they never 
so fitly chosen, must fail to embody our sense of 
the deep loss which we have sustained. 

Although death is a very common event in our 
world, yet in no sense, is it a common event 
which calls us together to-day. A great light, 
which has shone for over a half a century in this 
community, and in whose radiance we all have 
rejoiced, has suddenly been extinguished. No, 
not extinguished, for we read that "they that turn 
many to righteousness shall shine as the stars 
forever and ever." Not extinguished, but only 
removed to shine yonder with brighter beam and 
more glorious ray, yet so removed that hereafter 
the radiance shall burst upon us, only from the 
historic past. 

Although grief is the ordinary attendant of 
death, it is in no sense, an ordinary grief which 
burdens our heart to-day. The soldier, who in 
the vigor of his early manhood enlisted for Christ 
and threw away the scabbard, has now laid down 



56 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



the sword. The man of strong mind, of deep 
affection, of imperial will, of invincible determi- 
nation, of earnest piety, has now fallen on sleep. 
The bereavement has cast its sable pall, not only 
over this Church, which bewails the loss of its 
founder and first pastor, but over all these 
Churches, aye, over every heart and home in this 
community, for the universal conviction is, that 
" a prince and a great man has fallen to-day in 
Israel." 

Although^ we may not accept as an absolute 
statement of fact the maxim that " circumstances 
make the man," yet it is true, within given limits, 
that circumstances do exert a powerful influence 
in the formation of our characters and in the 
determination of our life-record. 

By force of circumstances a part of the min- 
istry of our departed father was largely contro- 
versial. He served in the time of great ecclesias- 
tical excitement ; in the days of fierce theological 
contentions, and he will live in history as one of 
the central features of those troubled times. He 
heartily loved discussion, and his logical mind 
would rush into argument with all the zest that 
the well-trained war-horse rushes into the battle, 
and whatever may be our views in relation to 



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the sentiments which he advanced, no one can 
question the fact, that among all the contestants 
there was none more decided in opinion, none 
more loyal to conviction of right and truth and 
duty than was he. 

But these are not the things by which we, his 
friends, his neighbors, his brethren, remember 
him. When we want his record, we look at the 
permanent work which he wrought for Christ. 
When we want to see his memorial, we lift our 
eyes and look about us. This Church of Christ 
gathered by his energy, this colossal edifice built 
by his perseverance, are more abiding testimo- 
nials to his worth and his work, than would be 
the most gorgeous, symmetrical and costly mau- 
soleum which affection could rear to his memory. 
Others may recall the logician, the theologian, 
the disputant. We remember only the man of 
childlike simplicity, of marked unselfishness, of 
deepest piety. We retain, in grateful recollec- 
tion, not simply those sterner elements of char- 
acter which go to make up the strong man, but 
also that singular gentleness and winning tender- 
ness which softened and sanctified these. And 
how beautifully these sweeter traits were mani- 
fested in the last days. I have sometimes 



5* 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



thought that the problem of life most difficult 
of solution is the problem, " how may we grow 
old gracefully?" It is indeed a hard thing, for 
one who has mingled among the activities of 
life, to find, by reason of advancing age and the 
many infirmities which age brings, that he is no 
longer able to keep step with the world's prog- 
ress, but, despite his disinclination, is compelled 
to fall back among the stragglers. It must be a 
still harder thing for a man, who, by his own zeal 
and energy, has made for himself an honored 
place and name, to be compelled to step aside 
and allow another to occupy his position. The 
average man would be jealous; the old man 
would be out of sympathy with the plans and 
projects of the younger. But what a beautiful 
solution to this problem did our dear father give. 
I may not anticipate what my brother Wood will 
doubtless tell you in his memorial discourse on 
next Sunday evening respecting the character 
of his personal relations to the departed, further 
than to state that which our brother's modesty 
may hinder him from presenting. Instead of 
that carping, scorching criticism which some old 
pastors feel in conscience bound to inflict upon 
their successors, this dear man of God has told 



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me repeatedly that he considered himself the 
greatest admirer of this young brother's ability, 
and that he devoutly thanked God for the success 
which had attended his ministrations, and I hold 
that there is nothing within the reach of human 
possibilities that could more clearly manifest the 
real nobility of the man. 

If you will pardon a personal reference, I can 
say that the same thoughtfulness and tenderness 
were also extended in a marked manner to me. 
Dr. Lord was a positive man in every respect 
— a negative in none. If he liked you, you 
knew it, and I have the satisfaction of knowing, 
that for some reason or other, he liked me, and 
doubtless to that fact my selection for the present 
service may be ascribed. You, brethren of the 
Central Church, will remember how touchingly 
and earnestly he urged upon you, during the prog- 
ress of the extra service of last winter, the duty 
of caring for your pastor ; how solemnly he en- 
joined you not to allow him to overtax himself, 
and you may remember the illustration he ad- 
duced to enforce his appeal when he said, " that 
dear brother of the First Church must die before 
spring, and that because of overwork." Thank 
God the dear old father was wrong in his conclu- 



6o 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C LORD. 



sion, because wrongly informed as to the facts of 
the case, yet this same tender solicitude has been 
the characteristic feature of his intercourse with 
me. In almost the last conversation I had with 
him, he pressed upon me the importance and 
necessity of caring for my health, and then said, 
" My dear brother, I have passed the compli- 
mentary age. I never do anything for compli- 
ment, and I never want any compliment paid me. 
Never ask me to preach for you as a compliment, 
but when and whenever you have a real need, 
whenever I can really serve you, call upon me 
without the slightest hesitation." This was the 
man as I knew him, and is it any marvel as I 
stand beside his lifeless form with these tender 
recollections running through my mind, that for 
one I feel, as doubtless we all feel, like crying 
aloud with the Prophet, " My Father, my 
Father ! " 

Very appropriately we have brought the old 
pilgrim back once more to the place of his toils, 
his trials and his triumphs, but only to bear him 
hence to his last long resting place. Never again 
shall we see that patriarchal form in this sacred 
desk ; never again will he dispense to you the 
emblems of the broken body and the shed blood ; 



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never again will that well known voice awake the 
slumbering echoes of this house of God. He has 
done his work, and has done it well. For nearly 
a half century he has occupied a public position, 
yet he comes down to the grave without an 
enemy, without a stain upon his character or a 
spot upon his reputation. Life's labors over, he 
rests in Christ, and we shall see him again only 
when this mortal shall have put on immortality. 

Although we may not speak his worth or esti- 
mate our loss, yet we may imitate his example, 
and we will enshrine among our dearest earthly 
memories the name of John C. Lord. 



62 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 

MEMORIAL SERMON. 



BY REV. CHAS. WOOD. 



" Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen 
this day in Israel?" — II Samuel, 3: 38. 

A PRINCE, though the blood of kings or nobles 
flowed not in his veins; though no sovereign's 
hand had placed the star or the ribbon upon 
his breast. A prince among men, by God's gifts 
of nature and of grace. No fitting eulogy can 
be spoken of him whom we this hour seek to 
honor; already it has found utterance in the 
gathering of this great assemblage, in the gar- 
lands of respect cast upon his grave by the 
members of the Common Council and of the 
Press, in his own works which do follow him 
while he now rests from his labors, in the very 
walls and stones of this edifice ; most of all, in 
the Christian lives of multitudes who were led by 
him in the way of truth, and in the tears of those 
who in nearly every town and hamlet of our State, 
as well as in our own city, hear with unfeigned 
sorrow of his departure. 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



63 



The eloquent biographer of one of the most 
brilliant of English historians and essayists, is 
content to find all needed hereditary honors for 
his hero in " a genealogy which derives from a 
Scotch manse." We too are content to trace 
back the stream of John Chase Lord's life to a 
source equally honorable. He was born in a New 
England parsonage, and to the day of his death 
the influences of that home were marked in his 
habits of thought and of speech. 

The years of his sojourn upon this earth were 
almost commensurate with the history of this city. 
It was in 1801 that the foundations of Buffalo 
were laid — it was on the ninth of August, 1805, 
that he began the struggle of life. In early boy- 
hood he attended a common school. Afterward 
he received instruction at one of the academies of 
New Hampshire, his native State. Neither in 
these schools, nor at Hamilton College, which he 
entered at the age of seventeen, did he give prom- 
ise of a career so full of usefulness as that which 
has now closed. Few could have foretold, unless 
gifted with the keenest powers of reading char- 
acter, that such a lad would develop into such a 
man. " I was wild and reckless," he says, and 
though he had great reverence for all that was 



6 4 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



true and good, his better purposes were often 
overborne by the strong tides which swept 
through his impetuous heart. Like Paul, in the 
days when he sat at the feet of Gamaliel, he saw 
no beauty in that Master whom he has since so 
faithfully served. 

In his journal, begun, as he tells us, "for the 
purpose of recording and keeping in remembrance 
the wonderful mercies of Almighty God," he 
writes, that in his school and college life, he was 
a source of constant grief to his Christian parents, 
because of his repeated refusals to give heed to 
Divine truth. Leaving college before the end of 
the regular course, he spent some months in Can- 
ada as the editor of a paper. Thence he came to 
Buffalo. He reached the village in 1825, with 
eighteen pence in his pocket, with no prospect of 
receiving aid from influential friends, of whom at 
that time he had not one of the many hundreds, 
who in later days esteemed it an honor to call 
him by that name. 

For the first year, while pursuing the study of 
the law, his chosen profession, " I was barely 
able," he says, " to procure sustenance." But he 
had formed resolutions of frugality and industry 
at the close of his college life, to which he now 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



65 



faithfully clung, and in which he found his best 
friends. He was determined to succeed, and he 
did. He pushed his way rapidly. He began to 
make money. Instead of spending it in extrava- 
gance, he invested it judiciously. " In 1828," he 
says, " I married my beloved wife. On every side 
my prosperity was enlarged," and then he analyzes 
the motives which at this time ruled his life. God 
was not in all his thoughts. In the Church itself 
the world was ever present. He heard the truth, 
but he heeded it not. There is nothing more in- 
teresting in his journal than the account he gives 
of his first religious impressions. 

" About this time," he writes, " my wife began 
to be very thoughtful upon religious subjects. I 
noticed the change, but had not so far lost my 
respect for religion as to dissuade her from cher- 
ishing such thoughts;" but he says, " there was 
no more worldly-minded young man in the village 
of Buffalo than myself." He was expecting soon 
to be appointed District Attorney for Erie county, 
and he had, as he thought, no time to pay atten- 
tion to the voice with which God was even then 
speaking to him. Suddenly there came from 
Rochester the news that a number of leading 
lawyers of the place, some of whom had been 



66 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



very skeptical, had become Christians. This 
startled him, drew his attention for a time away 
from worldly plans ; a wide-spread religious inter- 
est began to manifest itself in the church he 
attended. He listened now, when he went to the 
sanctuary, to the preaching of the truth. There 
soon came to him an overwhelming sense of sin. 
" I was weighed down by it," he says, " I began 
to pray. Some Christians too, took courage to 
speak to me, and to pray with me." But the 
more earnestly he sought Christ, the more earnest 
was the Evil One in his efforts not to let such a 
man escape from his power, to become a dreaded 
enemy. " My mind was filled," he says, " with 
terrible blasphemies ; at times I was prostrated to 
the floor by the most terrible thoughts." But he 
was never easily discouraged when he knew he 
was in the right way. He kept on seeking. He 
kept on praying, and one day as he prayed, the 
feelings of his heart were changed. He began to 
praise God for His justice and truth — a work 
which he never gave over while his mind was able 
to do the bidding of his will. There he believed 
the purpose of his life was altered. Henceforth 
he was to live for Christ. 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



67 



His was not a nature, as we all know, to cher- 
ish such a purpose in secret only. Early in the 
spring of 1 830, when the trees were beginning 
to put forth the buds and leaves of a new life, 
he stood with his wife before the pulpit of 
the First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo, and 
there, together, they consecrated themselves to 
the service of the Master. Remembering his 
wholeheartedness, we are not surprised to find 
that the next page of his journal gives his reasons 
for entering the ministry of the Gospel of Christ. 
In one of them he writes that his heart had 
been greatly touched by the necessities of the 
Far West, and having property of his own suffi- 
cient to support him, so that he need be no bur- 
den to any of the missionary societies of the 
Church, it was his hope, if God should seem so to 
direct, to labor at least for a number of years in 
the valley of the Mississippi. Though by the 
providence of God he was shut out from the ful- 
fillment of this wish, he alludes to it very often, 
and for many years he gave no small portion of 
his salary for the support of a missionary upon 
the frontier. At the close of his three years' 
course of theological study in Auburn Seminary 
he hopes that "he has grown in the knowledge of 



68 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



God and in acquaintance with the doctrines of 
revealed religion." From the seminary he went 
to supply a Church at Fayetteville, in this State, 
intending to remain there for a few months before 
going to the West ; and becoming greatly inter- 
ested in the people of that charge, he prays that 
he may not be kept, by love for them, from the 
work in the great valley, if such be God's will. 

From this time his journal opens to us a side of 
his character of which many perhaps have been 
almost totally ignorant. It was a great surprise 
to the clergy, and to the people of Scotland, 
when, upon the publication of the memoirs of 
Norman McLeod, it was found that he who had 
been so famous for his eloquence, his humor, and 
his exuberance of animal spirit, was also a man 
who had lived in as close communion to God as 
any who, because of great sanctimoniousness of 
manner, have been given a place in the unwritten 
Protestant calendar of saints. Some such feeling 
of surprise might be aroused in the hearts of 
those who remember our departed friend as the 
theologian, the controversialist, whose arguments 
often tore in shreds the logic of his opponents, 
who was always ready, like David, to meet either 
a lion, or a bear, or a giant, in single combat, 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



6 9 



when upon the written page they see the record 
of a spiritual life which was equally deep and 
strong. Like David, he knew what it was to talk 
with God in the night watches. Many of his 
prayers breathe the spirit of that wondrous fifty- 
first Psalm. Often he cries ''Create in me a clean 
heart, oh God." The first entry he makes in his 
journal, after reaching Fayetteville, is one filled 
with desire for the salvation of his people; and, 
with his close analysis of motives, he adds the 
hope that there may be no selfishness in this, 
and asks the help of God that he may desire 
the prosperity of every Church in Zion even as 
his own. Again and again, as he closes the 
narration of the Sabbath work, and there is but 
little concerning any other day, he mourns his 
lack of peace and faith, and prays for greater 
holiness and humility. He speaks of a high 
temper as the source of his besetting sin. He 
fears that he is often too irritable, and he 
reminds himself of Paul's admonition to Tim- 
othy, u The servant of the Lord must not strive, 
but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 
in meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
selves." When there came to the village some 

who taught doctrines which he believed were 
6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



not grounded upon the word of God, he saw 
that they were sincere and hesitated to speak 
against them, " lest haply I should be found," 
he says, " fighting against God." Not far from 
Fayetteville, at a place called Pompey Hill, he 
was invited to preach during a season of much- 
religious interest, and the inquiry meetings which 
were held during the day, and in the evening, were 
filled with those who were anxious to hear what 
they must do to be saved. In these meetings 
there came to him a consciousness of God's pres- 
ence such as he had not known before. " I felt," 
he writes, " like walking softly before God." 

From Fayetteville he was called to Geneseo, 
and there, too, God placed His seal to his minis- 
try. In his short pastorate, many who had been 
utterly indifferent to the truth were brought to 
Christ. Nearly all the heads of families who 
were in the habit of attending his church, came 
into the fold. Some who are now officers of 
Presbyterian Churches in this city, were then led 
to acceptance of the Saviour. By their con- 
sistent lives, they have borne witness, that his 
preaching was not in mere words of man's wis- 
dom. During the weeks in which that work was 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



/I 



being carried on, his one prayer is, " that he may 
be able to give God all the glory." 

In Buffalo the First Presbyterian Church, with 
which he and his wife united at the beginning 
of their new life, was fast becoming too strait 
for the numbers that wished to attend. It was 
deemed best that a colony should be sent off, and 
a new Church formed. At once the thoughts of 
this little company, who were now to build a 
home for themselves, were turned to Geneseo. 
Could they not secure for their pastor the young 
man whom they had first known as a successful 
lawyer and teacher? Some of them had sat at 
his feet, learners of earthly wisdom, they had 
grown to love him, and gladly would they hear 
from him the words that could make them wise 
unto salvation. They urged him to come and 
be their guide. He was already attached to the 
town. Many personal friends were eager for him 
to become once more a resident of Buffalo. 
He felt, so he writes, " that his nature was 
such that he needed to have a great deal to do 
to preserve his cheerfulness of spirit." Here he 
would find a field for his activities, affording un- 
limited opportunities for work, and in October, 
1835, he once more made this his home, scarcely 



72 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



dreaming that he should dwell here, till called 
of God to the many mansions. 

He found Buffalo a thriving country town. He 
has lived to see that town become the third city 
of the State. He found here one Presbyterian 
Church ; he has lived to see eight others organ- 
ized and developed. Each of the other denom- 
inations too, has not failed to do its share in 
providing for the religious wants of the people. 
Neither can we in truth refrain from saying that 
to his work, part at least of this prosperity, both 
temporal and spiritual, is due. He began his min- 
istry here in a church of apostolic plainness, and 
in that church he preached the plain gospel of the 
Apostles. The truth he taught was not new, 
but his way of presenting it was something very 
different from the preaching which is usually 
heard in the churches. He spoke, so it has 
been said, "like one who saw twelve jurors be- 
fore him whom he was determined to convince 
before he sat down," but the flash of his poet- 
ical imagination gave light and beauty to his 
severest arguments. He was, almost from the 
first, ranked among the leaders of thought. 
Around him gathered both young men and old, 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



73 



who were fascinated by his brilliant powers and 
his genial manner. 

The Church grew — grew with what was con- 
sidered, at that time, astonishing rapidity. I 
will not dwell upon the story of its life which 
has so often been told. We have come together 
to-night to think of the pastor, not of the church, 
and the pastor of the Pearl Street Church, 
afterwards called the Central, soon became, per- 
haps, the best known man in the city. Corre- 
spondents of eastern papers were never tired of 
describing his personal appearance, and the pecu- 
liarities of his oratory. In how many exciting 
days were his powers fully tested ! He was a 
member of the General Assembly of 1836, where 
he witnessed and took part in scenes like those 
which filled with excitement the United States 
Senate and House of Representatives in i860. 
There began the separation, which was com- 
pleted the following year, between the Old and 
New School parties in the Presbyterian Church. 
By the fact of his position as the only member of 
the Old School body in this city, he was forced 
into greater prominence than he desired. Part of 
his fame is due to his success as a controversialist, 
but he tells us that he never sought controversy. 



74 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



He never snuffed the battle afar off. He fought 
only when he believed that peace could not be 
purchased except by the denial of some principle 
to which he clung with the tenacity of a whole- 
hearted faith. When circumstances were changed, 
and he knew that there were others who would 
see that the truth did not suffer because of silence, 
he sheathed the sword which he had wielded 
so manfully, and never again drew it from its 
scabbard. 

He loved better to do the works of mercy. 
When, in -1849, the Asiatic cholera was claim- 
ing its scores of victims each week, he who had 
been foremost in theological battles, was now 
foremost in fighting with all his power the terrible 
pestilence, and the dire distress which followed in 
the path of the plague. Three years after this, 
in 1852, the Presbyterian church conferred upon 
him one of the greatest honors of his life. He 
was unanimously elected moderator of the Gen- 
eral Assembly, which convened that year in 
Charleston, S. C, and presided with the grace and 
dignity which characterized all his public appear- 
ances, while his addresses of welcome to delegates 
from sister churches of our own and other lands 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



75 



are still remembered for their good taste and 
appropriateness. 

His vigorous bodily health, which had with- 
stood the assaults of disease, was now some- 
what impaired, and by the advice of his phy- 
sicians he spent some six months of the fall 
and winter, just before the civil war, in preach- 
ing to one of the churches of Mobile. As a well- 
known man he was received with great kindness by 
all the citizens. He was shown, of course, the bet- 
ter side of that peculiar institution of the South, 
which was so soon to cause a war, from whose 
wounds we have not yet recovered. The terrible 
evils of slavery were hidden from his sight ; what 
wonder then, upon his return to the North he was 
ready to speak with greater forbearance of the 
slaveholder than the facts would warrant in the 
judgment of his Northern friends ! In theological 
views and by nature he was a conservative, and 
with this thought before us, we shall be able to 
understand, what has always seemed to many a 
mystery, that in 1861, he who had spoken but a 
few months previously in favor of the South, was 
among the most earnest in eloquent condemnation 
of those who had rebelled. In this he was per- 
fectly consistent. Slavery was constitutional. 



y6 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



The laws of the land protected the slaveholder. 
With his reverence for law, he could not but 
condemn those men of the North, whose zeal had 
led them into deeds which were unconstitutional 
and unlawful ; but when the roar of the first shot 
fired on Fort Sumter came to his ears, from that 
moment his love of law made him a firm supporter 
of the flag which rebels had sought to tear down. 
From this position he never wavered. Some of 
his most eloquent and memorable addresses were 
delivered in the trying days of 1862 and 1863. 
He saw many whom he had baptized in their 
infancy march forth, as strong men, to fight 
bravely for the right. Alas ! from this pulpit 
often he looked down into the pale, upturned 
face of some hero who had fallen at the front, or 
in the hospital, had breathed away his shattered 
and broken life. Of these men who had thus 
shed their blood for their country, he could never 
speak but with trembling voice and quivering lip. 
No one longed for an honorable peace more ear- 
nestly than he. No one rejoiced with a greater 
joy when the last blow was struck. 

But the fierce battle with evil, which he had 
so long fought, began now to tell upon his 
splendid powers. His spirits had indeed been 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



77 



kept up, as he had hoped, by having a great 
deal to do. But he had done too much ; the 
work of his own church was enough. To that v 
he had added greatly by public efforts. The 
bow had been strung too high. It was strained. 
He always loved to work, but the time was 
slowly coming when work was an effort. His 
church urged upon him the duty of having 
some assistance. In response to their entreaty 
he consented that one who had been very success- 
ful in a large village of Western New York should 
be called, and installed as his co-pastor. But in 
a little more than two years this new relationship 
was broken through the co-pastor's acceptance 
of an urgent invitation to take charge of a church 
in a beautiful village some forty miles from 
Buffalo. Again he had to do the whole work 
of his charge, but he had a high standard of 
what a minister should be. " The work of the 
ministry," so he wrote in his journal while at 
Fayetteville, " is an exceedingly great and labo- 
rious work, a work which requires the intellect 
of an Edwards, the piety of a Brainard, the 
zeal of a Paul, and the faith of an Abraham ; " 
and he adds the prayer, " God help me for 
His Son's sake." God answered the prayer ; he 



78 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



had done a great work, and he was not satisfied 
to undertake with diminished powers that which 
in his vigor had taxed him so severely. He 
asked his people to accept his resignation. But 
he had baptized many of them when they were 
children. He had heard husband and wife plight 
to each other their troth. He had received them 
into the membership of the church. He had 
broken to them the emblems of Christ's body. 
He had buried their dead. He had wept with 
them in their sorrows. He had rejoiced with 
them in their joy. How could they give him up? 
Against his own judgment, he kept on for a time, 
but at last he over-persuaded them, and was 
released from a pastorate which he had continued 
for thirty-eight years. 

Many of us here to-night never knew him 
at all. He was to us, what Edmund Burke was 
to those who sat in the House of Commons in 
1794. The memory of his great efforts was 
still fresh among the friends of his more vig- 
orous days. We saw only the flashes of light, 
which were but hints of the bright and steady 
flame which had burned so long. His mind 
had been so trained, both by the study of law 
and of theology, that in the years of his high- 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 79 

est mental activity, every subject seemed at a 
glance to fall in pieces, as a plant beneath the eye 
of a skillful botanist is in a moment resolved into 
its component parts. While other men were 
forced to dig with pick and bar among the rocks 
for the hidden truth, to him at the first blow, the 
whole mass seemed to reveal its treasures. He 
had the power — by no means as common even 
among great scholars as could be desired — of 
seeing more than one side of a subject. This 
made him fair in his statement of objections to 
the revealed word. In his famous course of lec- 
tures to young men, which at times crowded even 
the aisles of this edifice, he stated the difficulties 
of skeptics with such vividness and strength, that 
timid Christians were startled, and almost holding 
their breath, would wait with intense eagerness, 
and with a half-defined fear that no satisfactory 
answer would be found. But the sword of his 
logic was keen, and with a sigh of relief they saw 
it cleave the head of the giant from the body. 

In large public gatherings, when he was seen 
pushing his way toward the platform, a sense of 
satisfaction came at once to all. They knew the 
meeting would be a success. A writer in a reli- 
gious paper has told of the general desire that 



8o 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



was everywhere manifested to hear his lectures ; 
and his orations before literary societies. He 
himself had ridden on one hot midsummer day, 
more than forty miles in an open wagon, to listen 
to such an address. That the effects which he 
produced were by no means due to mere oratori- 
cal power is amply attested by the judgment 
which the General Assembly passed upon his 
intellectual ability when it offered him a Professor's 
Chair in Princeton Theological Seminary. But 
his heart was here, and he felt that even so flat- 
tering an invitation as this must be refused. Like 
the Breckenridges, and other men whose names 
the Church will never forget, he was by no means 
always equal in his public efforts. Neither was he 
careful to reserve his best things for great occa- 
sions. Upon a rainy Sabbath, or at the Wednes- 
day-evening lecture, some of his most beautiful 
thoughts were given to those who had braved 
the storm, or the darkness. But it was not in his 
natural gifts for public speech that he trusted to 
win men to Christ. He felt intensely, that it is 
not by might or by power, but by the Spirit of 
God, that the work is to be carried on, and for 
the assistance of that Spirit he never ceased to 
pray. 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 8 1 



His character, like his whole nature, was strong. 
He was impetuous, like Peter, though the Saviour, 
who ever kept Peter from falling, after that one 
sad hour of denial, kept him from dangers into 
which, else, he would have been led. Like nearly 
all who have done the best work for Christ, 
he had great animal powers, and appetites, and 
these controlled, directed toward one point, the 
glory of God, made him the successful man he 
was. He had a thorough hatred of all shams, 
and it was because he feared that by writing out 
his religious experiences and spiritual yearnings, 
he might be led into that exaggeration, which he 
thought he had perceived in many memoirs, that 
he gave up the journal, which he had begun with 
motives equally sincere. Such a character was 
not one to be easily blown hither and thither by 
every wind of doctrine. When you once knew 
his firm convictions on any important subject, 
after that you had no difficulty in knowing where 
to find him. If ever, for the time, he was led 
into any path of doubt or unbelief, he waited till 
he came again into the full light, before he de- 
scribed the dark way to his people, so that by no 
uncertain words was the rest of any believing one 
disturbed, and they who were walking in dark- 



82 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



ness were encouraged by his bright and hopeful 
counsel, to enter again, as he had, into the light. 

He never brought the processes through which 
his own mind had passed in the study, into the 
pulpit. He came there only with the results of 
his work. He did not look upon the house of God 
as a place where the chaff is to be sifted from the 
wheat. That he believed, should be done before 
the sanctuary was entered, so that only the pure 
grain might be spread out before the people. To 
his kindness of heart, great enough to embrace 
even the dumb creatures, many testimonials have 
already been borne. Strong as his reasoning 
powers were, his heart was stronger, and very 
often, because of pity, he thrust his hand deep 
into his pocket, against his better judgment. He 
was so frank himself, that it was hard to convince 
him that all were not equally honest in making 
those statements which so aroused his sympathy. 

The things that were lovely and of good report 
were the only things he dwelt upon with pleasure. 
Unlike most public men, he was always ready to 
attribute the best motives, whenever the proofs 
to the contrary were not overwhelmingly great. 
Already, too, by the pastor of the Church which 
was his spiritual mother, mention has been made 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 83 

of the unbounded generosity which characterized 
his bearing towards his successor. I have often 
felt, as I saw him sitting modestly in his pew, 
how unavailing all efforts of mine would have 
been, had he not given his hearty co-operation. 
Whenever, for a moment, there has been a ripple 
of discord, it was his voice that cried "peace," 
and that voice was always obeyed. Apparently 
his greatest desire was to hide himself, so that 
all eyes might be turned away from the past, 
of which he had so long been the central figure, 
to the necessities of the present, believing that 
only thus could the highest prosperity of the 
Church he had loved and nurtured be attained. 
He lived long enough to see the answer to some 
of the prayers he had offered, in a measure of 
success, over which he rejoiced more heartily 
than any of us. Then he felt ready, he said, to 
make one more prayer, " Lord, now lettest thou 
'thy servant depart in peace." 

Never again shall we see his stalwart form; 
never again shall we hear his voice pleading 
to God for us, but by him, this place has 
been filled with sacred associations, whose many 
tongues still plead with us that his God might 
be our God. If we have heard his prayers 



8 4 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



and counsels, and have gone away unmoved, 
may God grant that, as memory brings before 
us that form and face, — the very tones of that 
voice, — a tear of repentance shall moisten the 
cheek, and with a cry of sorrow for the past we 
shall cast ourselves at the feet of the Saviour, 
of whom he was but a disciple. Yet once 
more, not in memory only, but face to face, 
shall we all look upon him. In that great day, 
when the books shall be opened and the quick 
and the dead shall stand before the judgment 
throne of Christ, he will be there and we shall 
be there. Will the look upon his face be one 
of sorrow? Are there any of us who, through 
persistent rejection of Christ, must in that hour 
be told to depart from the presence of God ? 
Then, not the least terrible of the stings of re- 
morse, will be the remembrance through all eter- 
nity, of the words we have heard him speak 
which might have saved us, but which we heeded 
not ! The remembrance of that look of anguish 
which was upon his face, as he stood upon the 
right hand of God, that they whom he had 
loved, have lived and died as the enemies of his 
Saviour. To be lost we must trample under foot 
the love of Christ, the prayers and entreaties 



MEMORIAL SERMON. 



85 



of Christian parents and friends. Yes, we must 
trample under foot the pleadings of those lips 
now silent and cold. It cannot be. Let there 
come from the depths of every heart this night 
the prayer which has never yet been unanswered, 
" Save me, oh God, for thy Son's sake." 

As I stand and look over this great congrega- 
tion, there rises before me the vision of a multi- 
tude more vast than has ever been encircled by 
walls of stone. It is the vision of that throng 
which gathered upon the battlements of Heaven 
last Sabbath evening, just as the church-bells of 
earth were calling men into the sanctuary to 
worship God. Angels and archangels are there ; 
apostles and prophets are there; among them are 
many^ hundreds, who by the words spoken from 
this pulpit, through the years of the past, were 
brought into the kingdom of God. Upon their 
death-beds the hope filled their hearts that they 
should meet him, who had taught them the way 
of life, when his turn should come to cross the 
dark river. With shouts of gladness they wel- 
come him safe home at last ! But he lingers not. 
Through the streets of gold he presses his way 
till he stands by the throne of Him who died 
that we might live ; and as he lays his bright 
7 



86 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



crown before the pierced feet of Jesus, he speaks. 
Listen ! are not these the words that come from 
his lips? " Not unto us, O Lord; not unto us, 
but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and 
for thy truth's sake." 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 

MEMORIAL PAPER. 



§7 



A PAPER BY THE HON. JAMES O. PUTNAM. 

Read before the Buffalo Historical Society, April 2, 1877. 



The Historical Society devotes a passing hour 
to reminiscence and study of the life, character, 
and career of the late Rev. Dr. John C. Lord : 

He was born in Washington, New Hampshire, 
on the ninth of August, 1805, and was the son of 
Rev. John Lord and Sarah Chase, who was the 
cousin of the late Chief-Justice Salmon P. Chase. 
At the age of twelve years he entered Plainfield 
Academy, in his native State. He subsequently 
entered Madison Academy, and afterwards Ham- 
ilton College of New York, where he remained 
two years. He graduated in the same class with 
our distinguished fellow-townsmen, Judge Clinton, 
and the late Dr. Thomas M. Foote. After two 
years' editorial experience in Canada, he came to 
Buffalo in 1825, entering the office of Love & 



88 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



Tracy, then the leading law firm in Western New 
York. He taught a select school for a few 
months, having Orsamus H. Marshall, Esq., and 
Dr. James P. White as pupils. He was admitted to 
the Bar in 1828. In the latter part of that year 
he was married to Miss Mary Johnson, daughter 
of the late Dr. Ebenezer Johnson, the first 
Mayor of Buffalo, and one of its leading citizens. 
That marriage had its specially romantic incident, 
which survives a pleasant tradition of the time. 
In the same year he formed a partnership with 
Judge Love, which continued about two. years. 
During those years he held several civil and mil- 
itary commissions, the prizes offered to the enter- 
prise and talent of young professional aspirants. 

He brought to his profession, talent, health, 
and ambition. He had also, in an extraordinary 
degree a faculty for accumulation, and a stimu- 
lating love of property. He had the forecast and 
the pluck, which, with opportunity, lead to for- 
tune. There seemed no element wanting to 
assure him the largest success in his chosen 
profession. 

Yet in the midst of his early triumphs, to the 
surprise of all who had watched his auspicious 
beginning, he heard the voice which arrested Paul 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



8 9 



on that journey to Damascus, and obeyed it. 
From that hour he turned his back on all the 
allurements of a worldly ambition, for the labors 
and sacrifices of the ministerial office. This act, 
which shaped all his long public career, reveals, as 
nothing else could do, the ardor of his nature, 
the depth of his convictions, and the fountain 
springs of his character. 

After uniting with the First Presbyterian 
Church of this city, he entered the Auburn Theo- 
logical Seminary, in 1830, from which he grad- 
uated in 1833. 

He was soon called to Geneseo, and for two 
years was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in 
that village. During that time occurred in his 
Church, and in the community, one of the most 
remarkable revivals in the history of Western New 
York. The Doctor often referred to that move- 
ment as one of the most interesting with which 
he had ever been associated. In November, 1825, 
his mother-church, " the Old First," had reached 
a stage of growth when colonization became a 
necessity, and she planted the first of those more 
recent Churches which represent the Presbyterian 
interest in Buffalo. 



go 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



The Pearl Street Church was organized in 1835, 
worshiping at first in a temporary building. Doctor 
Lord, the favorite son of the First Church, was 
called to the pastorate of the new enterprise. In 
1836, was erected a beautiful church edifice, which 
from .its peculiar interior construction was famil- 
iarly called " the goose egg." I have seen grander 
churches at home and abroad, but St. Peter's in 
Rome hardly made a stronger impression on my 
mind in my mature years, than did that unique 
Pearl Street Church on my youthful fancy. 

I attended its Sabbath service in the fall of 
1836 or 1837, on tne occasion of a chance visit to 
Buffalo. It was without galleries, its audience 
room of oval form, the pulpit at the street end, 
and the orchestra at the rear. A full band, at 
least to my fancy it was full, furnished the instru- 
mental music. The blare of trumpets, and the 
harp, and the sackbut, and the viol, seemed to 
realize the musical glories of the old temple ser- 
vice. I had never before heard any instrument 
in worship of more cunning workmanship than 
the wooden pitch-pipe, and the steel tuning-fork, 
which were accustomed to launch " Mear " and 
" Dundee," "China" and " Silver Street," and 
kindred melodies, upon the air of my native vil- 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



91 



lage church. That orchestral magnificence still 
haunts my imagination. I am sorry " the goose 
egg" was made a victim to the spirit of modern 
improvement. 

Such were the beginnings of Doctor Lord's 
Buffalo career. In the course of a few years the 
needs of his congregation demanded a large edi- 
fice, and the present magnificent church in whose 
parlors we are now assembled, was built, and the 
Society reorganized under the name of the Cen- 
tral Presbyterian Church of Buffalo. And here, 
from about 1850, until his final retirement from 
the pulpit, and the dissolution of the pastoral tie, 
Dr. Lord ministered in season and out of season 
to his people. Here were delivered those great 
sermons and orations which placed him in the 
front rank of American pulpit orators. He made 
this church edifice by his labors and sacrifices, by 
his intellectual force and the power of his genius, 
monumental. 

The life of an able man is revealed by his opin- 
ions, his advocacy of them, and his character. 
And in the case of Doctor Lord it is pre-eminently 
true that these constitute, in a large degree, his 
personality, and to them we must direct our 
studies for a just appreciation of him. If in my 



9 2 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



brief sketch I shall draw on him for illustration, I 
do so because they are better than any I can 
offer, and because we are met here, by the altars 
where he ministered, to commune with his spirit, 
and to catch a fresh inspiration from his thought 
and life. 

Doctor Lord was for many years a large part of 
the intellectual, the moral, and in its best sense, 
the political history of Buffalo. During the mid- 
dle period of his life there was not a question in 
Church or State of general public interest, in 
which he was not a leader of opinion on one side 
or the other. 

In some respects he was a man of the past, 
rather than the present. His intellectual and 
theological sympathies were moulded by the ear- 
lier time and in the severe school of the Fathers 
rather than by the advanced opinion of later 
thinkers and actors. Both by mental organiza- 
tion and training he preferred the old ways to the 
new, and for primal truths would seek what he 
regarded the golden morn of time, rather than 
our meridian whose brightness he would not 
always take for light. Some of the grandest 
intellectual displays ever witnessed among us 
were his pulpit and platform defenses of the old 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



93 



philosophies, the old theology, the old economies 
of Church and State. There are yet some who 
remember those occasions when he delivered his 
popular addresses, kindling with his own zeal the 
thousands who were under the spell of his mag- 
netic eloquence and thought. There were some 
seeming contradictions in his positions at different 
times on some questions ; but they were only 
seeming. His life of opinions was a harmony. 
Even his Higher Law sermon, the boldest expres- 
sion of his life, and the most defiant of the gen- 
eral sentiment on the question of slavery and on 
the relations of human government to the people 
and to God, was perfectly consistent with his later 
position after slavery had thrown the gage of 
battle at the feet of the nation. 

These characteristics and the fact that he was 
a polemic actor, as well as a closet student, must 
be borne in mind, for any correct appreciation of 
his public life. In theology, he was a Calvinist. 
Had he been nurtured by St. Augustine, and 
trained by the great Genevan, he could not have 
been a more earnest champion of the doctrines, 
in all their length and breadth, and in their widest 
applications, to which they have given name. If 
we consider the tendencies of thought, both in 



94 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



Europe and America, at the time Dr. Lord en- 
tered upon the ministry, and remember the semi- 
revolutionary attitude of leaders abroad and at 
home, on social and religious questions, we shall 
not fail to see, that positive and controversial as 
was the character of his mind, he must adopt 
affirmative opinions on the whole range of ques- 
tions agitating the public mind, and maintain 
them with a zeal allied to passion. About con- 
temporary with his entry upon the ministry, the 
European wave of German philosophy and tran- 
scendental mysticism, which had done so much to 
disturb the old systems of belief in Germany, and 
after their introduction by Carlyle, in England, 
struck the New England coast, and their influence 
was soon felt in all schools of religious thought. 
It was at the period of the Doctor's settlement 
here in his new profession that Emerson was 
introducing the followers of Channing to those 
liberal fields, where so many now find pasturage 
in the oriental doctrine of the Over Soul. The 
transcendentalists were dreaming their dreams at 
Brook-Farm, presenting them to the public in the 
most fascinating forms of modern culture. In 
the more orthodox schools, Bushnell, Barnes, 
Beecher, Taylor and others, were maintaining 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



95 



their new interpretations of Scripture before coun- * 
cils and assemblies, some of them passing that 
once terrible ordeal — the trial for heresy. 

Tractarian Ritualism, too, was at its height in 
the English Church, and its mediaeval spirit was 
startling the staid Protestantism of both hemi- 
spheres. Superadded to these disturbing ele- 
ments in the theologic world, Science appeared, 
pressing its audacious footstep in every field' of 
legitimate inquiry, astonishing by its revelations 
as to the age and method of creation, and filling 
the minds of many good men with fears that they 
would lead the world to the sty of Epicurus and 
the negations of Atheism. 

At the same period, another wave, humani- 
tarian rather than religious, came rolling in upon 
us from England, a wave first evoked by the 
spells of Sharp and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, 
and which, after a struggle of forty weary years, 
in defiance of the hostility of the Established 
Church and the English aristocracy, had abol- 
ished the African slave trade, abolished slavery 
in the British colonies, and threatened to over- 
throw in methods wholly revolutionary our own 
peculiar institution which had grown up under, 
and was protected by, our Federal Constitution 



9 6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



*and laws. In short, the time of his settlement 
here in the ministry was one of extraordinary 
ferment, of intellectual audacity, of social experi- 
ment and of revolutionary tendencies in Church 
and State. 

Doctor Lord's zeal for the old theology, and 
his attitude on the slavery question, were greatly 
stimulated to aggressive action by the new move- 
ments. The sovereignty of law as the represent- 
ative of a sovereign God, and human society as 
a special organization by the divine economy, 
were with him central truths, the only foundations 
of a true social philosophy, or of just systems of 
law and government for men. And on the thresh- 
hold of these revolutionary movements he planted 
himself upon the old doctrines, a conservative of 
conservatives, contending for the old ideas, the 
old formulas, and the old economies. • After the 
disruption of the Presbyterian Church in 1837, 
there was but one ultimate choice possible for 
him. He must go with the Conservatives. To 
the adherents of either party who saw below the 
surface, and felt the ground swell of the revolution, 
" Old School " and " New School," represented 
antagonisms which survived during the slavery 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



97 



discussion, and until both bodies were liberalized 
by a new generation. 

His ideas of the State, and its relations to the 
citizen, revealed the harmony between Doctor 
Lord the statesman, and Doctor Lord the pub- 
licist and theologian. This harmony is clearly 
brought to view in his celebrated Thanksgiving 
Sermon in 1850, " On the Higher Law as applica- 
ble to the Fugitive Slave Bill." His theological 
system declaring the divine institution of human 
governments and the sovereignty of human law 
as the reflex of divine law, furnishes the basal 
principle of that sermon. There was much in the 
angry controversy at the time, much in the peril 
many men believed to be menacing the stability 
of the government, which gave point to the dis- 
course, but its logic flowed from the principle I 
have stated. 

It will be remembered that Mr. Seward, in a 
speech in the Senate resisting the Fugitive Slave 
Law, had avowed the higher law doctrine. 
" There is a higher law than the Constitution " 
was his formula. In a period of calm there was 
nothing in this declaration which had been start- 
ling. It was not novel ; it was old as human 
thought. It was uttered by Cicero in language 



9 8 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



whose feeblest translation is as full of beauty as 
it is of truth. " There is," he says, " a law which 
is not one thing at Rome, another at Athens, one 
thing to-day and another to-morrow, but one and 
the same, eternal and immutable among all 
nations, and in all time." Sophocles, of the 
Greeks, had said in one of his tragedies by a 
character defying legitimate but unjust authority: 

" Nor of such force thy edicts did I deem, 
That mortal, as thou art, thou hast the power 
To overthrow the firm unwritten laws 
Of the just Gods. These are not of to-day, 
Or yesterday, but through all ages live." 

It has been accepted by moral philosophers of 
all times. The sentiment, properly interpreted, 
is written on the universal heart of man. It is 
the instinct of the human conscience. But 
thrown out by our great senator as apparent jus- 
tification of disobedience to a statute, obedience 
to which seemed to be the condition of national 
peace, it is not surprising that it should have 
provoked alarm. He maintained in that sermon 
the divine character of government and the duty 
of the citizen because it was divine, to obey the 
laws. He laid down this formula: " The action of 
civil governments, within their appropriate juris- 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



99 



diction, is final and conclusive upon the citizen." 
This theory of entire subjection to existing civil 
authority he claimed to find in the doctrines of 
the New Testament, and in the example and 
practice of the primitive Christians. His sermon 
throughout maintained his favorite theory that 
Christianity did not come into the world a force 
directly addressed to governments or to society. 
The general doctrines of the sermon never had 
more brilliant advocacy. It was universally 
accepted as the ablest exposition of the conserv- 
ative view of the relations of the citizen to the 
government which appeared from the pulpit of 
the time. It gave him a national reputation. 
By the one side he was accepted as a prophet, by 
the other as an apostate from the principles of 
liberty. In a speech by Mr. Webster, at Syracuse, 
in 185 1, defending his own seventh of March 
speech in the Senate, he said: " They denounce 
me as a fit associate of Benedict Arnold and Pro- 
fessor Stuart, and Dr. Lord. I would be glad to 
strike out Benedict Arnold : as for the rest I am 
proud of their company." It was only after the 
storm of 1850 had culminated in civil war, result- 
ing in the overthrow of the power which raised 
the controversy, that the bitterness of the contest 
LofC. 



100 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



subsided and all parties began to act harmoniously 
in the new era of homogeneous institutions. We 
now begin to do justice to the great actors in that 
drama. Calumny and detraction on the one side 
and excessive adulation on the other, were equally 
offensive to Truth, who serenely awaits the final 
judgment of history. The last year has seen 
erected in the metropolis of our State, memorial 
statues of the two foremost leaders on either side, 
and the American people have united in placing 
the unfading laurel on the brows of Webster and 
Seward. 

Another position of the higher law sermon, 
provoking, if possible, still sharper criticism, was 
its defense of the relation of slavery because 
approved by the political system of Moses. To 
this the time had its answer. It was denied that 
American slavery in the nineteenth century could 
be justified by the civil code of semi-savage tribes, 
recently emerged from a condition of foreign sub- 
jugation and slavery, who had never risen above 
the lex talionis for private wrongs, and who pun- 
ished with death the smallest departure from their 
social and sumptuary laws. 

While he so defended the purely legal aspects 
of slavery, neither in that sermon, nor in any 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



IOI 



utterance of his public or private life, did he ever 
apologize for the cruelties of the institution, or 
claim that it was other than a relic of a bar- 
baric past. 

No social blandishments could weaken his 
vision or warp his judgment on a question of hu- 
manity. Whether he ever modified his views 
upon the scriptural argument, I do not know, but 
it is a matter of history that when slavery laid 
its hand on the Ark of the Union, Doctor Lord's 
patriotism rose to the height of the occasion, and 
during the four years of defensive war for the 
Government there was no voice in the land of 
clearer, grander tone for liberty and the Union 
than his. There were no abler discussions of the 
whole controversy involved in that struggle, no 
more impassioned appeals to the patriotism of 
the country than are to be found in his political 
sermons of that time. Their spirit may be di- 
vined by this single sentence from a Thanksgiving 
sermon of the war period, which closes his review 
of the purpose of the Confederates to make 
slavery the controlling power of this continent : 

" For myself, I had rather the Almighty should 

sink the continent in the sea, or that the nation 

should nobly perish on the battle-field for freedom, 
8 



102 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



than submit to this inglorious result — to the 
lamentable degradation of our national prostra- 
tion at the footstool of slavery." 

He had but one way pf defending a cause dear 
to him — with all his might. He had no reserve, 
he cut down the bridges and burned the ships 
that there could be no retreat from the line of 
action sanctioned by his head, and approved by 
his heart. And in that crisis his patriotism was a 
holy passion. How perfectly he was in sympathy 
with the policy of final emancipation, is beauti- 
fully illustrated by his poem entitled, 

" The Silent Sorrow of the Enfranchised Slave. 
Suggested by the Obsequies of President Lincoln 
in Buffalo T 

It might fittingly close this review of a contro- 
versial incident in his life, which more than any 
other gave prominence to his career. Its closing 
stanzas are as follows: 

Ah ! who can know their untold agony, 

To whom his death appears the crowning loss ? — 

So the disciples feared on that dread day 

When the great Sufferer hung upon the Cross. 

The sable mother, as hen eyes grow dim, 
Wails o'er her first-born by the cottage fire ; 

Freedom, though late for her is all to him — 
Must it, alas ! with that great life expire ? 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



103 



Old scarred and palsied slaves, who from the shore 
Of burning Afric, in their youth were torn, 

Bow down in speechless misery before 
The tale of horror on the breezes borne ! 

They know not that the manner of his death 
Forever seals their chartered rights as men — 

That in their martyr's last expiring breath, 
The Nation heard these solemn words again. 

Two hundred years of unrequited toil 
Have heaped up treasures for this day of blood, 

And every drop of slave gore on our soil 
Demands another from the Sword of God. 

While his theological system led him to the 
conservative action we have reviewed, no man 
brought a larger sympathy to oppressed peoples. 
And while it is true that he rejected the social 
contract theory of the origin of States, yet in the 
Higher Law sermon he distinctly maintained the 
right of revolution for adequate cause. 

Mazzini himself could hardly have hailed with 
more enthusiasm the revolutions of 1848 in Eu- 
rope. The democratic spirit of that time had no 
grander interpreter of its passion and its hope. 

His poem entitled, " Kings and Thrones are 
Falling," was hailed on both continents as an em- 



104 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



bodiment of the spirit of the epoch. Let me 
recall to you a few of its ringing stanzas : 

Kings and thrones are falling, 

The sound comes o'er the sea, 
Deep unto deep is calling 
To the conflict of the free. 
At the voices of the Nations, like the roaring of a flood, 
The sun is turned to darkness, the moon is changed to blood. 
* * * * * * * 

The word of power is spoken 
In accents loud and long ; 
The iron chain is broken 

From the ankles of the strong ; 
The blind and beaten giant, is staggering up at length. 
And the pillars of his prison-house begin to feel his strength. 

^ ■5fs ife ¥fc 

The powers of earth are shaking 
From the Danube to the Rhine, 
Old Germany is waking 

Like a Cyclop from his wine. 
And dark his brow with hatred, and red his eye with wrath. 
While he scatters his tormentors like pigmies from his path. 

King or priest shall never 
Rebuild the broken wall, 
For thought is freed forever 
And truth is now for all. 
The startled nations hear a voice through heaven and earth 
resound, 

The everlasting word of God shall never more be bound. 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



I05 



The revolution was crushed, but its spirit sur- 
vived in the popular heart, and to-day France, 
Germany and Italy have entered upon their 
careers of regeneration. The Doctor was right, 
only right too soon. 

In the middle portion of his ministry the Doc- 
tor delivered occasional lectures on questions of 
interest. In a series before the Young Men's 
Association, he developed his theory of civiliza- 
tion and progress. They presented many original 
views. He maintained that civilization was the 
original condition of man, so cutting from the 
roots the theory of development. Eden blos- 
somed with the highest intelligence, and the 
earliest races and peoples were at the acme of 
culture. Civilization was normal, and progress 
was toward barbarism. This view flowed out of 
his theological system. Man, when first created 
in the image of God, was at the highest point of 
culture. Man's transgression sowed the seeds of 
decadence, which in time resulted in corruption 
and barbarism. From this condition peoples 
were rescued by the restoration of indvidual man 
to purity through religious culture. 

In the same series of lectures, and on other 
occasions, he took issue with the broad schools 



106 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 

of every name on the subject of a progressive 
Christianity. There could be no new interpre- 
tations of Scripture, no modifications to meet 
new systems of thought, or a progressive school 
of social philosophy. 

The theory of Guizot, as developed in his His- 
tory of Civilization, that Christianity addressed 
itself to the individual and not to social or polit- 
ical institutions, he maintained with great ability. 
The Higher Law sermon was largely a develop- 
ment of that idea. I may say that in this posi- 
tion Dr. Lord had the sympathy of the conserva- 
tive school in all Christian Churches. It was one 
of the series of rocks on which the Presbyterian 
Church split in 1837, an d as the slavery contro- 
versy advanced, the two antagonistic systems of 
Christian philosophy became more pronounced. 
Was Christianity a principle addressed to the 
individual, or was it, as well, a force thrown into 
the field of the world to act upon institutions 
social and political ? If the first hypothesis were 
the true, then slavery, and poor 7 laws, and the 
treatment of the criminal and insane, indeed all 
the social questions which are pressing on us for 
solution through law and governmental policy, 
are outside the immediate action of Christian 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



107 



principles and the Christian Church. If the 
second hypothesis be the true, then Christianity 
is not only a power acting on individuals, but it 
addresses itself as a law to every element of 
society and to every institution in the State. 

The advanced view of our day is a logical one. 
It was a matter of course that, as the theologic 
spirit declined, the humane spirit of Christianity 
should advance. And the decline of the theo- 
logic spirit results from the fundamental idea of 
the Reformation — the right of private interpre- 
tation of Scripture, coupled with the develop- 
ment of social and political institutions. This 
progress is not in the principles of Christianity, 
for no philosophy can rise higher than its head- 
lands, but in the better vision of our time. I 
think we must come to the conclusion that the 
whole history of Christianity has been a history 
of development, slow but necessary, and every 
step one of Providential training of the race from 
high to higher. St. Simon Stylites, of the fifth 
century, sitting on his pillar sixty feet in the air 
for thirty years, was the model saint of his period. 
The crusaders of the tenth and eleventh centu- 
ries were an advance upon the ascetic of the 
desert. Thq intellectual activities of Luther's 



io8 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



day amid the perpetual tramp of armies over 
Europe, stimulated the thought of the age, and 
prepared the way for a new era of institutions. 

The parable of the good Samaritan and the 
doctrine of the fraternity of men and the uni- 
versal fatherhood of God, were in the New Tes- 
tament from the beginning, but out of the range 
of human vision until the time of Howard and 
Wilberforce. The horizon of one era is the me- 
ridian of another, and in the procession of the 
ages all his constellations will shed their light 
on the children of God. Says George Fox, in 
his journal: " And I saw that there was an 
ocean of Darkness and death ; but an infinite 
ocean of light and love flowed over the ocean 
of darkness, and in that I saw the infinite love 
of God." 

To-day, after nearly eighteen hundred years of 
struggle for its just position in the world, the 
social spirit of the Founder of Christianity, as 
revealed in the incidents of his life and in his 
Parables, has come to the front and leads our 
era. It is the motive power of every humane 
and philanthropic movement. Even the few 
philosophers who, like John Stuart Mill and Har- 
riet Martincau, co-operate in these modern move- 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



I0 9 



ments, whether or not they acknowledge their 
obligation, find their best inspiration in Jesus. 
The great service of men who, like Doctor Lord, 
stood in the old ways and acted as breakwaters 
to the flood of new ideas, was this, and it cannot 
be overestimated. They held on to the solid 
body of doctrine without which Christianity de- 
generates from a religion to a philosophy, so pre- 
venting a precipitate radical revolution, until the 
new and old ideas could adjust themselves to 
each other, and act, as they now do, in accord 
in their mission to man and to society. 

In search of the central principle of the life 
of Dr. Lord as it flowed out to the world through 
his intellect and through his heart, I believe I 
find it in his faith in the divine. Deity was as 
an atmosphere in which his spirit consciously 
lived and wrought. Priest or prophet never wor- 
shiped with more awe the uncreated Source of 
Law and Love. In this connection, remember- 
ing with what vigor in his best days the Doctor 
combated the materialistic tendencies of certain 
schools, it is a matter of interest to know his last 
thoughts, and to catch his dying testimony. Dur- 
ing the session of the Scientific Association in 
Buffalo, in August last, I found him one day in 



110 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



his library, his mind occupied with the discus- 
sions of the week. He at once opened upon the 
evolution theory of man. His defense of his old- 
time views of the existence of God, of man as 
created in His image, and man's need of a relig- 
ious faith, recalled the Dr. Lord of twenty years 
ago. I shall never forget these words, nor his 
face, almost transfigured, as he uttered them : 
" They cannot dethrone God, they cannot over- 
throw His word, and I laugh them to scorn, I 
laugh them to scorn." 

His long ministry occurred, as we have seen, 
at a transition period. He could, at its close, 
look over the field and see that, after all the up- 
heavals and changes of the time, the principles 
of Christianity were more firmly entrenched than 
ever in the hearts of men. He could well afford 
to laugh at any school who hoped to strike out 
of human consciousness, faith and trust in an 
Author and Ruler of the world. So long as man 
suffers and sorrows, so long as the spiritual faculty 
survives, so long as the sentiment of reverence 
and worship, the primal instincts of man, lead 
his soul to the great ideals of virtue and good- 
ness which, begin where they will, culminate in 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



I 1 1 



Deity, materialism will never usurp the altars of 
religion in human households. 

Dr. Lord was not an exact scholar, nor did he 
make pretensions to be such. He loved historic 
studies, but I do not think he brought to them 
the absolute judicial faculty, rare, if it ever ex- 
ists, in earnest natures. Because of this he was 
the more powerful advocate and confident leader. 
His force was never weakened by hesitating opin- 
ions after his position was once taken. 

As a preacher he attained great distinction. 
He had repeated calls to several of the strongest 
and most important Churches of the country. 
New York, Pittsburgh and Mobile sought to win 
him from Buffalo, by inducements which required 
a strong man to resist. 

He supplied a pulpit, prior to 1850, in Mobile 
for six months, while he sought an escape from 
the rigors of our winter climate. There was a 
time, about 1848, when, wearied with the loneli- 
ness of his position as the pastor of the only 
Old-School Church here, he was inclined to ac- 
cept the Pittsburgh call. The Doctor felt his 
isolation keenly. It was not the fault of per- 
sons, but was the natural result of the sharp 
controversies in which he gave blows quite as 



112 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



hard as he received. In those days clergymen 
of different ecclesiastical relations had much less 
fellowship with each other than now. They had 
not yet discovered as, to some extent, they have 
since, and, unless the world comes to a stand- 
still, will to a still greater, that nothing enlarges 
the clerical vision like broad out-looks over its 
own denominational fence into neighboring fields 
of thought. The odium tJieologicum had been 
an unknown quantity, had there always been 
free trade in the commerce of theological ideas. 
The years when I attended his Church were his 
years of prime and of his hardest professional 
work and greatest activity. His sermons were 
not of the speculative or philosophic type, for 
such was not the cast of his mind. He was then 
much in the habit of "skeletonizing" his ser- 
mons, trusting to the inspiration of the occasion 
for their style and the complete elaboration of 
his thought. He rarely failed to impress the 
leading doctrines so sacred to him, and often 
combated what he regarded the false philoso- 
phies, in the pulpit and out, of the day. He was 
of the militant order of men, and was never hap- 
pier than when defending " the faith " against 
the men and the system which openly or covertly 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



113 



assailed it. He hated social wrongs, he hated 
cant. That holy wrath which burns in the utter- 
ances of the Hebrew prophets, as they scourge 
the hypocrisy and oppression of their day, re- 
appeared in this man of moral passion and of 
glowing sympathy with the just, the good, and 
the true, and of hate of the wrong, the hypocrite 
and the false. No man was less awed by power 
in any unworthy sense ; no man paid less hom- 
age to accidental greatness. All the veneering 
of society he mercilessly tore from those who 
sought it for a covering of selfishness and op- 
pressive greed. 

One pulpit characteristic may be noted — the 
large use he made of the poetry of the Bible. 
Himself a poet, his fancy literally reveled in the 
imagery of the Hebrew melodists. The Book of 
Job, Ecclesiastes, the later prophets, and above 
all, the Psalms, were of his poetic religious clas- 
sics. I doubt if I ever heard him preach or pray 
that he did not invest much of his thought with 
the poetry of the Old Testament. More than 
any man I ever knew, his type of mind, his meth- 
ods of illustration, his genius, in short, were of 
Hebrew mould. If he discoursed of death, the 
Ninetieth Psalm was on his lips. He neve'r 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



wearied of the rhythmic thought of that "Song of 
Moses." The imagery of the decay of the hu- 
man faculties in the closing chapter of Eccle- 
siastes, " The silver cord is loosed, the golden 
bowl is broken, the pitcher at the fountain, and 
the wheel at the cistern," were his interpreters of 
the vanishing shadows of time. 

" How is the strong staff broken and the beau- 
tiful rod." " The beauty of Israel is slain upon 
the high places, how are the mighty fallen and 
the weapons of war perished," voiced his lament 
over the great dead whom he mourned. His 
memory was a picture-gallery of the Book of Job, 
and in his moments of intellectual exaltation he 
would bear you as in a triumphal chariot amid 
the sublimities of the Arabian poet. He loved a 
few of the old English poets from whose wells he 
oftener drew than from the moderns. He had no 
sympathy with the sentimental schools, and his 
taste was severe and exacting. As illustrating 
his love of sacred poetry, I will relate an incident 
connected with a visit to him a few weeks before 
his death. He was too weak to walk unaided, 
his voice feeble, but his spiritual vision clear as 
i the sunlight. He spoke of poetry as the natural 
form of expression of divine praise and worship, 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



115 



and quoted from his favorite Hebrew poets. He 
asked me to read the translation of the Russian 
Hymn to the Deity — a favorite, and a hymn of 
marvellous grandeur and sublimity. 

The reading concluded, he pronounced it the 
noblest of modern hymns of praise. I said I 
knew another not unworthy to go with it, and 
read his own " Ode to God." At the conclusion 
of the reading, the tears flowing down his cheeks, 
he said, " It is much better than I thought." 

With all the boldness and vigor of his mind, 
his sensibility found expression, on occasion, in 
strains of elegiac beauty. I am tempted to recall 
an illustration of this side of his genius. This 
example is from a funeral sermon delivered on 
the occasion of the death of young Sprague, 
son of the late Dr. Sprague, whose memory is 
still fragrant among us. He accidentally shot 
himself on Grand Island, and for three days his 
body was undiscovered, and when found had no 
appearance of decay. I quote from the sermon 
a reference to this circumstance: 

" He fell without a struggle or a motion ; one 
moment full of life, in the next his mortal remains 
lay under the shadows of the primitive forests, 
protected from the sun by the boughs of those 



n6 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



ancient trees, which were planted by the hand of 
God before the vessel of Columbus touched the 
shore of the new world. There, in the calm quiet 
of its last sleep, lay the body of our dear young 
friend, for days and nights, yet, no wild beast of 
the forest was suffered to touch it, no fowl of 
the air was permitted to alight upon that soul- 
deserted tenement; with strange instinctive rev- 
erence the denizens of the woods respected the 
remains which are before us to-day, unmutilated 
and with less change than is the ordinary result of 
death. No storm beat upon this defenseless tab- 
ernacle of a departed spirit, no rain descended to 
disfigure or deform that guarded body ; only the 
dews fell, like angels' tears, and they were dried 
up by the breath of the morning. We may im- 
agine the innocent birds gazing down from the 
neighboring trees with amazement, upon this 
strange tenant of their solitudes ; watching with 
curious eyes the calm repose of the lifeless body, 
until the ' sentinel stars set their watch in the 
sky,' looking pitifully down through the openings 
of the forest with their calm, pure eyes, till the 
dawning day. So God protected the body of our 
departed friend in the wilderness, until human 
feet were directed to its resting-place, and hands 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



117 



of men, with reverence and solemn awe, raised 
and bore it to those who waited in that fearful 
suspense. Which is harder to be borne than the 
bitterness of death." 

His ablest papers were of a controversial char- 
acter, whatever their form. He was like the war 
horse of whose description he was so fond. " He 
saith among the trumpets, ha ! ha ! and he smell- 
eth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains 
and the shouting." His genius was happy in the 
stimulus of opposition, and when engaged with a 
foeman worthy his steel, he was incarnate courage 
and power. There is a touching reference to the 
part he had borne in the controversies of his time, 
in his address to his people on the twenty-fifth 
anniversary of his pastorate. He says : 

" In the providence of God it has so happened 
that much of the labor and odium of the neces- 
sary controversy with aggressive errors and her- 
esies has fallen to my lot. When rationalism has 
put forth its dogmas, in some offensive and hostile 
way, I have been called to stand in the breach." 

He then proceeds to speak of his defenses of 
the doctrine of his Church, and his resistance to 
the aggressions of Romanism : 
9 



I 1 8 MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 

" In all this I have been the servant and agent 
of the Protestant and Orthodox denominations 
of this city, but it has happened in my case as in 
that of many a better and abler man, that instead 
of a grateful remembrance of a good service ren- 
dered in a perilous time, the imputation of a 
controversial temper has followed and been the 
reward of the difficult and even dangerous duty I 
have been called to discharge." 

A single sentence reveals his satisfaction that 
the age of controversy had passed, and that he 
too welcomed the new era : 

" If I know myself, I am not inclined to con- 
troversy ; though constitutionally fearless I am 
a lover of peace, and no one who has imputed 
to me a spirit of controversy can rejoice more 
than I have done that for the last few years, I 
have not been compelled to enter the arena of 
theological discussion." 

The Doctor's feeling protest was unnecessary. 
After the smoke of the battle has cleared away 
and the passions of the hour subsided, Dr. Lord 
appears one of the most unselfish and consecrated 
men that ever entered the lists to battle for the 
right. And of all the contestants, on either side, 



MEMORIAL PAPER. II9 



none returned from the conflict with brighter 
shield or more untarnished honor. 

Few men communicated so much with the pub- 
lic through the press as did Dr. Lord. For the 
first twenty years of his Buffalo ministry, he dis- 
cussed almost every question of large interest. 
His articles to the public journals and his pam- 
phlets would make volumes. 

In a pre-eminent degree, he for many years held 
the position here which so many of the clergy 
hold in Great Britain, that of an educator of the 
public, and creator of public opinion on matters 
of large, but general interest. I believe Great 
Britain owes as much to some of her clergy as 
she does to her statesmen, for the reform of 
abuses which were crushing out her life. 

Sydney Smith, and Charles Kingsley of a later 
generation, are examples of clergymen who car- 
ried the sorrows and physical needs of the masses 
on their hearts, and were felt in every corner of 
the Kingdom through their earnest work to re- 
lieve them. It indicates a timely revolution. 
The bodies of men must be taken care of as well 
as their souls. The clergy are an educated class, 
consecrated to self-denying labor, and removed 
from the ordinary temptations to self-seeking, 



120 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



and there is no reason why they should not be 
great factors in every movement which seeks bet- 
ter laws, and better administration affecting pop- 
ular health, popular morals, and the comforts and 
recreations of the people. I confess to no sym- 
pathy with that feeling which would restrict the 
clergy to the spiritual office of their profession. 
Some of the best outside work done to-day in 
this country, is done by the clergy of all schools, 
liberal and orthodox. Their influence as a pro- 
fession is not of the same type as fifty years ago ; 
less popular awe hedges them in to make them 
a peculiar class, above, rather than of, the people, 
but their true power is, I believe, greater than 
ever, because it is related more nearly to human- 
ity in its daily needs. It has lost none of its 
sense of the relations of the present to the future 
life, but it has a better appreciation of the rela- 
tions of this life to itself, as felt in the industries 
and home-lives of men. 

The strong elements of Dr. Lord brought out 
in his public career were hardly more distinguish- 
ing than the characteristics revealed in private 
and personal relations. He was genial, with a 
happy flow of wit, and humor and repartee. He 
loved cheerful companionship and valued the 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



121 



good things of the world as gifts of God for 
human use. He had no small arts, or sly policies, 
but was open, above board. If he opposed he 
opposed like a man. If he was on your side he 
was faithful to the death. He was impetuous 
but chivalric. He had prejudices to conquer, but 
no conscious injustice to others to lament. He 
had the simplicity of a child, and without vanity 
was proud. He was a rash man who ventured 
to trifle with his self-respect, or to strike where 
he loved. He would serve in no Philistine Tem- 
ple for the sport of lords or fools. He would 
rather, Sampson-like, " bow himself with all his 
might" between its "middle pillars." There is 
a holy anger that resteth in the bosom of wise 
men. 

He was a warm friend. He was truly 11 a good 
Griffith," and no one who had need of a mantle 
of charity could ask for one of more ample folds 
than his. It was a beautiful trait and sometimes 
cost him dear, for he was not a discriminating 
judge of character. He was trustful, sympathetic, 
and had a large vision for the virtues of his 
friends. 

His home was literally a place of refuge for 
the poor and needy. Without children of his 



122 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



own, the children of others, and often of the 
extreme poor, had the protection and care of his 
house. These offices were sometimes rewarded 
with grateful love. There is a poetic beauty in 
this incident : A poor and simple-minded lad 
living in the vicinity, had learned to call the Doc- 
tor friend. When told of his death, he begged 
for his little savings that he might buy flowers 
for the burial time. He was gratified, and his 
handful of winter bloom was placed at the feet 
of his friend where they now rest in the deep 
silence. 

This sympathetic nature overflowed the ordi- 
nary channels and led him to befriend the brute 
creation. I will venture to say that no house in 
the land has given more sympathy and care 
to races of domestic animals than his. No 
words but his own can give any adequate idea 
of his hate of cruelty to the poor beasts that 
serve us, and the high place he gives them in the 
Divine Thought. The following of his sonnets 
deserves to be written in gold : 

" Doth God take care of oxen," — who upholds 
All suns and systems — round whose august seat 
The veiled Cherubim with covered feet, 
Cry Holy ! Holy ! He whose care enfolds 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



123 



The Heavenly Powers who thro' the streets of gold 
Pass out angelic messengers, more fleet 
Than winds to do his will? He who of old 
Spared Nin'veh for his herds, doth yet behold 
The poor dumb creatures, who do ever cry 
To him for judgment, groaning with the lash 
And wounds and hunger — can that All-Seeing Eye 
Fail to regard and judge, before whose flash 
The Heavens grow pale ? Each moan of agony 
Is placed on record 'gainst the avenging day. 

How he loved Buffalo ! Had it been all his 
own he could not have been more devoted to its 
interests. He believed in her, and in her future 
as a leading American city. His life here as a 
lawyer and clergyman, compassed almost the 
whole growth of the town. He knew the early 
men who laid the foundations of the city. He 
had followed many of them to the grave. He 
had outlived all his early pulpit colleagues save 
one, — who is still with us, discharging the duties 
of the position he so long has honored. There 
was no other who on that bleak winter's day 
could so fittingly, and none with more feeling, 
discharge the last offices at the grave of our 
friend, than the venerable rector of St. Paul's. 

About the last public appearance of Dr. Lord 
was at the banquet of the Buffalo Bar, a few 



124 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



months before his death. The occasion found its 
highest interest in his presence. For the first 
time in a half century he stood with his early 
guild — recognized as one of them, and honored for 
his long and useful career. Out of two hundred 
guests there was not one present who knew him 
in his first professional days. His life had come 
round a full circle, and he came like a warrior of 
fifty years service, to bid the profession of his 
youth, " Hail and farewell." I am sure that none 
who were then present will ever forget the wit 
and the genius, and the rich nature which he 
brought to that banquet, and poured out so prod- 
igally for our delight. His form and presence 
never appeared more grandly than on that occa- 
sion, and when he left he carried with him the 
homage of all hearts. 

I know that pictorial immortality is apt to be 
as "words writ in water.'' Still it has been 
thought best to found in the New City Hall a 
representative portrait gallery of Buffalo's illus- 
trious lawyers and judges. Dr, Lord had a dual 
professional life : Eminent in one, honored in 
both professions. Why should it not be devolved 
upon the Buffalo artist whose national reputation 
is our renown as well as his, to paint for that 



MEMORIAL PAPER. 



125 



gallery the picture of this peer of the greatest of 
them all? Do you say this will never be ? 

I remember the reply of the elder Cato, to one 
asking why he had no public statue. " I would 
much rather be asked why I have no statue than 
why I have one." 

His long service in the ministry found him, at 
length, old and weary. Responsive to his re- 
peated and urgent requests, his people reluctantly 
granted him release, and in 1873 his resignation 
of the pastorate was accepted. That occasion is 
historic and was marked by the tenderest expres- 
sions of mutual love. A young man took his 
place, whom the Doctor at once adopted to his 
confidence and heart. And so the curtain drops 
on the active part of a great life. 

Twenty-five years ago our dear friend estab- 
lished his home in a suburban retreat. There, 
amid broad acres, beautified by his own hands, 
and in a noble library where were gathered the 
thoughts of the ages, he enriched his nature for 
the duties of time, and prepared for the limitless 
future. 

For a half century he had consecrated his 
powers to humanity and to God. Having passed 
the summit hour of ordinary life, on Sunday, Jan- 



126 



MEMOIR OF JOHN C. LORD. 



uary 21, 1877, he died. He died in the city that 
honored and revered him, surrounded by kindred 
and friends that loved him. His life was full- 
orbed, his death a peaceful transition. 

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail, 
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble. 



